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A Word Is Used "correctly" When The Average Hearer Will Be Affected By It In The Way Intended. This Is A Psychological, Not A Literary, Definition Of "correctness". The Literary Definition Would Substitute, For The Average Hearer, A Person Of High Education Living A Long Time Ago; The Purpose Of This Definition Is To Make It Difficult To Speak Or Write Correctly.

-Bertrand Russell

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A Word Is Used

Bertrand Russell

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A Word Is Used "correctly" When The Average Hearer Will Be Affected By It In The Way Intended. This Is A Psychological, Not A Literary, Definition Of "correctness". The Literary Definition Would Substitute, For The Average Hearer, A Person Of High Education Living A Long Time Ago; The Purpose Of This Definition Is To Make It Difficult To Speak Or Write Correctly.

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Reason May Be A Small Force, But It Is Constant, And Works Always In One Direction, While The Forces Of Unreason Destroy One Another In Futile Strife.

I Suppose The Advocates Of Unreason Think That There Is A Better Chance Of Profitably Deceiving The Populace If They Keep It In A State Of Effervescence.

The People Who Are Regarded As Moral Luminaries Are Those Who Forego Ordinary Pleasures Themselves And Find Compensation In Interfering With The Pleasures Of Others.

The Painter Has To Unlearn The Habit Of Thinking That Things Seem To Have The Color Which Common Sense Says They 'really' Have, And To Learn The Habit Of Seeing Things As They Appear.

Contempt For Happiness Is Usually Contempt For Other People's Happiness, And Is An Elegant Disguise For Hatred Of The Human Race.

As A Lover Of Truth, The National Propaganda Of All The Belligerent Nations Sickened Me. As A Lover Of Civilization, The Return To Barbarism Appalled Me.

Dont Let The Old Break You; Let The Love Make You

Shakespeare . . . If He Does Not Give You Delight, You Had Better Ignore Him [if You Can].

A Good Social System Is Not To Be Secured By Making People Unselfish, But, By Making Their Own Vital Impulses Fit In With Other Peoples. This Is Feasible. Those Who Have Produced Stoic Philosophies Have All Had Enough To Eat And Drink. I Feel I Shall Find The Truth On My Deathbed And Be Surrounded By People Too Stupid To Understand—fussing About Medicines Instead Of Searching For Wisdom. I Hate Being All Tidy Like A Book In A Library Where Nobody Reads – Prison Is Horribly Like That.

As Soon As It Is Held That Any Belief, No Matter What, Is Important For Some Other Reason Than That It Is True, A Whole Host Of Evils Is Ready To Spring Up.

Some Care Is Needed In Using Descartes' Argument. "i Think, Therefore I Am" Says Rather More Than Is Strictly Certain. It Might Seem As Though We Are Quite Sure Of Being The Same Person To-day As We Were Yesterday, And This Is No Doubt True In Some Sense. But The Real Self Is As Hard To Arrive At As The Real Table, And Does Not Seem To Have That Absolute, Convincing Certainty That Belongs To Particular Experiences.

If Any Philosopher Had Been Asked For A Definition Of Infinity, He Might Have Produced Some Unintelligible Rigmarole, But He Would Certainly Not Have Been Able To Give A Definition That Had Any Meaning At All.

To Speak Seriously: The Standards Of "goodness" Which Are Generally Recognized By Public Opinion Are Not Those Which Are Calculated To Make The World A Happier Place. This Is Due To A Variety Of Causes, Of Which The Chief Is Tradition, And The Next Most Powerful Is The Unjust Power Of Dominant Classes.

The Man Who Suffers From A Sense Of Sin Is Suffering From A Particular Kind Of Self-love. In All This Vast Universe The Thing That Appears To Him Of Most Importance Is That He Himself Should Be Virtuous. It Is A Grave Defect In Certain Forms Of Traditional Religion That They Have Encouraged This Particular Kind Of Self-absorption.

Ethical Metaphysics Is Fundamentally An Attempt, However Disguised, To Give Legislative Force To Our Own Wishes.

In Attempting To Understand The Elements Out Of Which Mental Phenomena Are Compounded, It Is Of The Greatest Importance To Remember That From The Protozoa To Man There Is Nowhere A Very Wide Gap Either In Structure Or In Behaviour. From This Fact It Is A Highly Probable Inference That There Is Also Nowhere A Very Wide Mental Gap.

Brief And Powerless Is Man's Life; On Him And All His Race The Slow, Sure Doom Falls Pitiless And Dark.

Science Tells Us What We Can Know, But What We Can Know Is Little, And If We Forget How Much We Cannot Know We Become Insensitive To Many Things Of Great Importance.

The Human Heart As Modern Civilization Has Made It Is More Prone To Hatred Than To Friendship. And It Is Prone To Hatred Because It Is Dissatisfied.

It Is Not What The Man Of Science Believes That Distinguishes Him, But How And Why He Believes It. His Beliefs Are Tentative, Not Dogmatic; They Are Based On Evidence, Not On Authority Or Intuition.

All Who Are Not Lunatics Are Agreed About Certain Things : That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead, Better To Be Adequately Fed Than Starved, Better To Be Free Than A Slave

A Million Million Years Gives Us Some Time To Prepare For The End . . . Let Us Make The Best Of It.

Envy, In Fact, Is One Form Of A Vice, Partly Moral, Partly Intellectual, Which Consists In Seeing Things Never In Themselves, But Only In Their Relations.

When One Admits That Nothing Is Certain One Must, I Think, Also Admit That Some Things Are Much More Nearly Certain Than Others. It Is Much More Nearly Certain That We Are Assembled Here Tonight Than It Is That This Or That Political Party Is In The Right. Certainly There Are Degrees Of Certainty, And One Should Be Very Careful To Emphasize That Fact, Because Otherwise One Is Landed In An Utter Skepticism, And Complete Skepticism Would, Of Course, Be Totally Barren And Completely Useless.

Fools And Fanatics Are Always So Certain Of Themselves.

Thought Provoking

The State Is A Collection Of Officials, Different For Difference Purposes, Drawing Comfortable Incomes So Long As The Status Quo Is Preserved. The Only Alteration They Are Likely To Desire In The Status Quo Is An Increase Of Bureaucracy And The Power Of Bureaucrats.

My First Advice (on How Not To Grow Old) Would Be To Choose You Ancestors Carefully.

To The Young I Should Offer Two Maxims: Don't Accept Superficial Solutions Of Difficult Problems. It Is Better To Do A Little Good Than Much Harm. I Should Not Offer Anything More Specific; Every Young Person Should Decide On His Or Her Own Credo.

All Great Books Contain Boring Portions, And All Great Lives Have Contained Uninteresting Stretches.

The Triumph Of Science Has Been Mainly Due To Its Practical Utility, And There Has Been An Attempt To Divorce This Aspect From That Of Theory, Thus Making Science More And More A Technique, And Less And Less A Doctrine As To The Nature Of The World. The Penetration Of This Point Of View To Philosophers Is Very Recent.

Love, Children, And Work, Are The Great Sources Of Fertilizing Contact Between The Individual And The Rest Of The World.

[kant] Was Like Many People: In Intellectual Matters He Was Skeptical, But In Moral Matters He Believed Imjplicitly In The Maximx That He Had Imbibed At His Mother's Knee.

Too Little Liberty Brings Stagnation, And Too Much Brings Chaos.

Religions That Teach Brotherly Love Have Been Used As An Excuse For Persecution, And Our Profoundest Scientific Insight Is Made Into A Means Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

We Are Told That Sin Consists In Acting Contrary To God's Commands, But We Are Also Told That God Is Omnipotent. If He Is, Nothing Contrary To His Will Can Occur; Therefore When The Sinner Disobeys His Commands, He Must Have Intended This To Happen.

Organized People Are Just Too Lazy To Look For Things

Logic Must No More Admit A Unicorn Than Zoology Can.

Each Act Of Cruelty Is Eternally A Part Of The Universe; Nothing That Happens Later Can Make That Act Good Rather Than Bad, Or Can Confer Perfection On The Whole Of Which It Is A Part.

Men Fear Thought As They Fear Nothing Else On Earth - More Than Ruin, More Even Than Death.

Hatred Of Enemies Is Easier And More Intense Than Love Of Friends. But From Men Who Are More Anxious To Injure Opponents Than To Benefit The World At Large No Great Good Is To Be Expected.

Another Merit Of Home Is That It Preserves The Diversity Between Individuals. If We Were All Alike, It Might Be Convenient For The Bureaucrat And The Statistician, But It Would Be Very Dull, And Would Lead To A Very Unprogressive Society.

The Method Of "postulating" What We Want Has Many Advantages; They Are The Same As The Advantages Of Theft Over Honest Toil.

No One Ever Gossips About The Virtues Of Others

There Is Much Pleasure To Be Gained From Useless Knowledge.

I Cannot Favour Laws Such As That Of Idaho, Which Allows Sterilization Of 'mental Defectives, Epileptics, Habitual Criminals, Moral Degenerates, And Sex Perverts.' The Last Two Categories Here Are Very Vague . . . The Law Of Idaho Would Have Justified The Sterilization Of Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, And St. Paul.

Religion Is Something Left Over From The Infancy Of Our Intelligence, It Will Fade Away As We Adopt Reason And Science As Our Guidelines.

Throughout The Long Period Of Religious Doubt, I Had Been Rendered Very Unhappy By The Gradual Loss Of Belief, But When The Process Was Completed, I Found To My Surprise That I Was Quite Glad To Be Done With The Whole Subject.

Mathematics Is Only The Art Of Saying The Same Thing In Different Words.

Science Does Not Aim At Establishing Immutable Truths And Eternal Dogmas; Its Aim Is To Approach The Truth By Successive Approximations, Without Claiming That At Any Stage Final And Complete Accuracy Has Been Achieved.

Cruel Men Believe In A Cruel God And Use Their Belief To Excuse Their Cruelty. Only Kindly Men Believe In A Kindly God, And They Would Be Kindly In Any Case.

I Am Paid By The Word, So I Always Write The Shortest Words Possible.

Religions, Which Condemn The Pleasures Of Sense, Drive Men To Seek The Pleasures Of Power. Throughout History Power Has Been The Vice Of The Ascetic.

The More Things A Man Is Interested In, The More Opportunities Of Happiness He Has And The Less He Is At The Mercy Of Fate, Since If He Loses One Thing He Can Fall Back Upon Another.

European Travellers Find The Japanese A Smiling Race.

I Believe In Using Words, Not Fists. I Believe In My Outrage Knowing People Are Living In Boxes On The Street. I Believe In Honesty. I Believe In A Good Time. I Believe In Good Food. I Believe In Sex.

Our Individual Life Is Brief, And Perhaps The Whole Life Of Mankind Will Be Brief If Measured In Astronomical Scale

No Great Achievement Is Possible Without Persistent Work.

I Went To Salt Lake City And The Mormons Tried To Convert Me, But When I Found They Forbade Tea And Tobacco I Thought It Was No Religion For Me.

Fear Is The Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Go Hand In Hand.

The Main Thing Needed To Make Men Happy Is Intelligence.

Religion And Science Are Two Aspects Of Social Life, Of Which The Former Has Been Important As Far Back As We Know Anything Of Man

... The Whole World Of Loneliness, Poverty, And Pain Make A Mockery Of What Human Life Should Be.

Love As A Relation Between Men And Women Was Ruined By The Desire To Make Sure Of The Legitimacy Of Children.

The Modern Man Thinks That Everything Ought To Be Done For The Sake Of Something Else, And Never For Its Own Sake.

Some People Would Rather Die Than Think.

One Of The Symptoms Of An Approaching Nervous Breakdown Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important.

The Sea, The Stars, The Night Wind In Waste Places, Mean More To Me Than Even The Human Beings I Love Best.

Envy Is The Basis Of Democracy.

When Considering Marriage One Should Ask Oneself This Question; 'will I Be Able To Talk With This Person Into Old Age?' Everything Else Is Transitory, The Most Time Is Spent In Conversation.

Although This May Seem A Paradox, All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation. When A Man Tells You That He Knows The Exact Truth About Anything, You Are Safe In Inferring That He Is An Inexact Man. Every Careful Measurement In Science Is Always Given With The Probable Error ... Every Observer Admits That He Is Likely Wrong, And Knows About How Much Wrong He Is Likely To Be.

An Atheist, Like A Christian, Holds That We Can Know Whether Or Not There Is A God. The Christian Holds That We Can Know There Is A God; The Atheist, That We Can Know There Is Not. The Agnostic Suspends Judgment, Saying That There Are Not Sufficient Grounds Either For Affirmation Or For Denial. At The Same Time, An Agnostic May Hold That The Existence Of God, Though Not Impossible, Is Very Improbable; He May Even Hold It So Improbable That It Is Not Worth Considering In Practice. In That Case, He Is Not Far Removed From Atheism.

These Illustrations Suggest Four General Maxims[...]. The First Is: Remember That Your Motives Are Not Always As Altruistic As They Seem To Yourself. The Second Is: Don't Over-estimate Your Own Merits. The Third Is: Don't Expect Others To Take As Much Interest In You As You Do Yourself. And The Fourth Is: Don't Imagine That Most People Give Enough Thought To You To Have Any Special Desire To Persecute You.

For My Part I Distrust All Generalizations About Women, Favorable And Unfavorable, Masculine And Feminine, Ancient And Modern; All Alike, I Should Say, Result From Paucity Of Experience.

Masculine And Feminine

Obscenity Is Whatever Happens To Shock Some Elderly And Ignorant Magistrate.

[regarding] The Convention That Clergymen Are More Virtuous Than Other Men. Any Average Selection Of Mankind, Set Apart And Told That It Excels The Rest In Virtue, Must Tend To Sink Below The Average.

The Solution Of The Difficulties Which Formerly Surrounded The Mathematical Infinite Is Probably The Greatest Achievement Of Which Our Age Has To Boast.

Thee Will Find Out In Time That I Have A Great Love Of Professing Vile Sentiments, I Don't Know Why, Unless It Springs From Long Efforts To Avoid Priggery.

The Pursuit Of Knowledge Is, I Think, Mainly Actuated By Love Of Power. And So Are All Advances In Scientific Technique.

We May Define "faith" As The Firm Belief In Something For Which There Is No Evidence. Where There Is Evidence, No One Speaks Of "faith." We Do Not Speak Of Faith That Two And Two Are Four Or That The Earth Is Round. We Only Speak Of Faith When We Wish To Substitute Emotion For Evidence. The Substitution Of Emotion For Evidence Is Apt To Lead To Strife, Since Different Groups, Substitute Different Emotions.

If Life Is To Be Fully Human It Must Serve Some End Which Seems, In Some Sense, Outside Human Life, Some End Which Is Impersonal And Above Mankind, Such As God Or Truth Or Beauty. Those Who Best Promote Life Do Not Have Life For Their Purpose. They Aim Rather At What Seems Like A Gradual Incarnation, A Bringing Into Our Human Existence Of Something Eternal, Something That Appears To Imagination To Live In A Heaven Remote From Strife And Failure And The Devouring Jaws Of Time.

Without Effort And Change, Human Life Cannot Remain Good. It Is Not A Finished Utopia That We Ought To Desire, But A World Where Imagination And Hope Are Alive And Active.

When I Was A Child . . . Only Virtue Was Prized, Virtue At The Expense Of Intellect, Health, Happiness, And Every Mundane Good.

Opinions Which Justify Cruelty Are Inspired By Cruel Impulses.

Men Fear Thought As They Fear Nothing Else On Earth - More Than Ruin, More Even Than Death. Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habits; Thought Is Anarchic And Lawless, Indifferent To Authority, Careless Of The Well-tried Wisdom Of The Ages. Thought Looks Into The Pit Of Hell And Is Not Afraid ... Thought Is Great And Swift And Free, The Light Of The World, And The Chief Glory Of Man.

I Am Allowed To Use Plain English Because Everybody Knows That I Could Use Mathematical Logic If I Chose.

Mathematical Logic

Prison Is A Severe And Terrible Punishment; But For Me, Thanks To Arthur Balfour, This Was Not So. I Was Much Cheered On My Arrival By The Warder At The Gate, Who Had To Take Particulars About Me. He Asked My Religion, And I Replied 'agnostic.' He Asked How To Spell It, And Remarked With A Sigh: 'well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.' This Remark Kept Me Cheerful For About A Week.

Men Who Are Unhappy, Like Men Who Sleep Badly, Are Always Proud Of The Fact.

A Word Is Used "correctly" When The Average Hearer Will Be Affected By It In The Way Intended. This Is A Psychological, Not A Literary, Definition Of "correctness". The Literary Definition Would Substitute, For The Average Hearer, A Person Of High Education Living A Long Time Ago; The Purpose Of This Definition Is To Make It Difficult To Speak Or Write Correctly.

So Far As I Can Remember, There Is Not One Word In The Gospels In Praise Of Intelligence.

The True Function Of Logic ... As Applied To Matters Of Experience ... Is Analytic Rather Than Constructive; Taken A Priori, It Shows The Possibility Of Hitherto Unsuspected Alternatives More Often Than The Impossibility Of Alternatives Which Seemed Prima Facie Possible. Thus, While It Liberates Imagination As To What The World May Be, It Refuses To Legislate As To What The World Is

One Of The Most Interesting And Harmful Delusions To Which Men And Nations Can Be Subjected Is That Of Imagining Themselves Special Instruments Of The Divine Will.

Much Of The Most Important Evils That Mankind Have To Consider Are Those Which They Inflict Upon Each Other Through Stupidity Or Malevolence Or Both.

If I Were A Medical Man, I Should Prescribe A Holiday To Any Patient Who Considered His Work Important.

Next To Enjoying Ourselves, The Next Greatest Pleasure Consists In Preventing Others From Enjoying Themselves, Or, More Generally, In The Acquisition Of Power.

Modern Definitions Of Truth, Such As Those As Pragmatism And Instrumentalism, Which Are Practical Rather Than Contemplative, Are Inspired By Industrialisation As Opposed To Aristocracy.

Is There Any Knowledge In The World Which Is So Certain That No Reasonable Man Could Doubt It?

It Is Permissible With Certain Precautions To Speak In Print Of Coitus, But It Is Not Permissible To Employ The Monosyllabic Synonym For This Word.

Speaking Psycho-analytically, It May Be Laid Down That Any "great Ideal" Which People Mention With Awe Is Really An Excuse For Inflicting Pain On Their Enemies. Good Wine Needs No Bush, And Good Morals Need No Bated Breath.

Science, By Itself Cannot, Supply Us With An Ethic.

Public Opinion Is Always More Tyrannical Towards Those Who Obviously Fear It Than Towards Those Who Feel Indifferent To It.

Civilized People Cannot Fully Satisfy Their Sexual Instinct Without Love.

Real Life Is, To Most Men, A Long Second Best, A Perpetual Compromise Between The Ideal And The Possible.

Even If The Open Windows Of Science At First Make Us Shiver After The Cozy Indoor Warmth Of Traditional Humanizing Myths, In The End The Fresh Air Brings Vigor, And The Great Spaces Have A Splendor Of Their Own.

In A Democracy It Is Necessary That People Should Learn To Endure Having Their Sentiments Outraged.

Man Is A Rational Animal – So At Least I Have Been Told. Throughout A Long Life, I Have Looked Diligently For Evidence In Favour Of This Statement, But So Far I Have Not Had The Good Fortune To Come Across It, Though I Have Searched In Many Countries Spread Over Three Continents.

When You Come To Look Into This Argument From Design, It Is A Most Astonishing Thing That People Can Believe That This World, With All The Things That Are In It, With All Its Defects, Should Be The Best That Omnipotence And Omniscience Has Been Able To Produce In Millions Of Years.

In A Logically Perfect Language, There Will Be One Word And No More For Every Simple Object, And Everything That Is Not Simple Will Be Expressed By A Combination Of Words, By A Combination Derived, Of Course, From The Words For The Simple Things That Enter In, One Word For Each Simple Component.

The . . . Increase In The Power Of Officials Is A Constant Source Of Irritation To Everybody Else.

There Is A Further Advantage [to Hydrogen Bombs]: The Supply Of Uranium In The Planet Is Very Limited, And It Might Be Feared That It Would Be Used Up Before The Human Race Was Exterminated, But Now That The Practically Unlimited Supply Of Hydrogen Can Be Utilized, There Is Considerable Reason To Hope That Homo Sapiens May Put An End To Himself, To The Great Advantage Of Such Less Ferocious Animals As May Survive. But It Is Time To Return To Less Cheerful Topics.

Democracy Has At Least One Merit, Namely That A Member Of Parliament Cannot Be Stupider Than His Constituents, For The More Stupid He Is, The More Stupid They Were To Elect Him.

Democracies Have

The Whole Of Theology, In Regard To Hell No Less Than To Heaven, Takes It For Granted That Man Is What Is Of Most Importance In The Universe Of Created Beings. Since All Theologians Are Men, This Postulate Has Met With Little Opposition.

Thinking You Know When In Fact You Don't Is A Fatal Mistake, To Which We Are All Prone

Herd Pressure Is To Be Judged By Two Things: First, Its Intensity, And Second, Its Direction.

The Human Race May Well Become Extinct Before The End Of The Century. Speaking As A Mathematician, I Should Say The Odds Are About Three To One Against Survival.

Extreme Hopes Are Born Of Extreme Misery, And In Such A World Hopes Could Only Be Irrational.

Power, Like Vanity, Is Insatiable. Nothing Short Of Omnipotence Could Satisfy It Completely.

Televison Allows Thousands Of People To Laugh At The Same Joke And Still Remain Alone.

Unrestricted Nationalism Is, In The Long Run, Incompatible With World Peace.

We Are Faced With The Paradoxical Fact That Education Has Become One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence And Freedom Of Thought.

If We Compare Europe With Other Continents, It Is Marked Out As [another] Persecuting Continent.

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid, And However Unpleasant The Truth May Be, It Is Better To Face It Once And For All, To Get Used To It, And To Proceed To Build Your Life In Accordance With It.

Our Beliefs Are, However, Often Contrary To Fact.

Life And Hope For The World Are To Be Found Only In The Deeds Of Love.

Love Cannot Exists As A Duty; To Tell A Child That It Ought To Love Its Parents And Its Brother And Sisters Is Utterly Useless, If Not Worse.

I Am Sometimes Shocked By The Blasphemies Of Those Who Think Themselves Pious.

Fanaticism Is The Danger Of The World, And Always Has Been, And Has Done Untold Harm. I Might Almost Say That I Was Fanatical Against Fanaticism.

Civilized Life, If It Is To Be Stable, Must Provide A Harmless Outlets For The Impulses Which Our Remote Ancestors Satisfied In Hunting. In Australia, Where People Are Few, And Rabbits Are Many, I Watched The Whole Populace Satisfying The Primitive Impulse In The Primitive Manner By The Skilful Slaughter Of Many Thousands Of Rabbits.

The Life Of Man Is A Long March Through The Night, Surrounded By Invisible Foes, Tortured By Weariness And Pain, Towards A Goal That Few Can Hope To Reach, And Where None May Tarry Long.

The Experience Of Overcoming Fear Is Extraordinarily Delightful.

Overcoming Fear

One Who Believes, As I Do, That The Free Intellect Is The Chief Engine Of Human Progress, Cannot But Be Fundamentally Opposed To Bolshevism, As Much As To The Church Of Rome.

To Be Out Of Harmony With One's Surroundings Is Of Course A Misfortune, But It Is Not Always A Misfortune To Be Avoided At All Costs. Where The Environment Is Stupid Or Prejudiced Or Cruel, It Is A Sign Of Merit To Be Out Of Harmony With It.

Aristotle Could Have Avoided The Mistake Of Thinking That Women Have Fewer Teeth Than Men, By The Simple Device Of Asking Mrs. Aristotle To Keep Her Mouth Open While He Counted.

All Who Are Not Lunatics Are Agreed About Certain Things. That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead, Better To Be Adequately Fed Than Starved, Better To Be Free Than A Slave. Many People Desire Those Things Only For Themselves And Their Friends; They Are Quite Content That Their Enemies Should Suffer. These People Can Only Be Refuted By Science: Humankind Has Become So Much One Family That We Cannot Ensure Our Own Prosperity Except By Ensuring That Of Everyone Else. If You Wish To Be Happy Yourself, You Must Resign Yourself To Seeing Others Also Happy.

Those Whose Lives Are Fruitful To Themselves, To Their Friends, Or To The World Are Inspired By Hope And Sustained By Joy: They See In Imagination The Things That Might Be And The Way In Which They Are To Be Brought Into Existence.

A Life Devoted To Science Is Therefore A Happy Life, And Its Happiness Is Derived From The Very Best Sources That Are Open To Dwellers On This Troubled And Passionate Planet.

What Is Best In Mathematics Deserves Not Merely To Be Learnt As A Task, But To Assimilated As A Part Of Daily Thought, And Brought Again And Again Before The Mind With Ever-renewed Encouragement.

Affection Cannot Be Created; It Can Only Be Liberated.

The First Man Who Said "fire Burns" Was Employing Scientific Method, At Any Rate If He Had Allowed Himself To Be Burnt Several Times. This Man Had Already Passed Through The Two Stages Of Observation And Generalization. He Had Not, However, What Scientific Technique Demands - A Careful Choice Of Significant Facts On The One Hand, And, On The Other Hand, Various Means Of Arriving At Laws Otherwise Than My Mere Generalization.

The Main Things Which Seem To Me Important On Their Own Account, And Not Merely As Means To Other Things, Are Knowledge, Art, Instinctive Happiness, And Relations Of Friendship Or Affection.

Either Man Will Abolish War, Or War Will Abolish Man.

What Is Matter? Never Mind.

Ethics Is In Origin The Art Of Recommending To Others The Sacrifices Required For Cooperation With Oneself.

Animal Rights, Taken To Their Logical Conclusion, Mean Votes For Oysters.

Written Words Differ From Spoken Words In Being Material Structures. A Spoken Word Is A Process In The Physical World, Having An Essential Time-order; A Written Word Is A Series Of Pieces Of Matter, Having An Essential Space-order.

Escape From Boredom Is One Of The Really Powerful Desires Of Almost All Human Beings.

War...seems A Mere Madness, A Collective Insanity.

Force Plays A Much Larger Part In The Government Of The World Than It Did Before 1914, And What Is Especially Alarming, Force Tends Increasingly To Fall Into The Hands Of Those Who Are Enemies Of Civilization.

The Practice Of Inhibiting Impulses, Which Is To A Great Extent Necessary To Civilized Life, Makes Mistakes Easier, By Preventing Experience Of The Actions To Which A Desire Would Otherwise Lead, And By Often Causing The Inhibited Impulses Themselves To Be Unnoticed Or Quickly Forgotten.

We Are Told That Sin Consists In Acting Contrary To God's Commands, But We Are Also Told That God Is Omnipotent. . . . This Leads To Frightful Results. . . . The British State Considers It The Duty Of An Englishman To Kill People Who Are Not English Whenever A Collection Of Elderly Gentlemen In Westminster Tells Him To Do So. . . . Church And State Are Placable Enemies Of Both Intelligence And Virtue.

Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habit. Thought Is Great And Swift And Free.

I Used Often To Go To America During Prohibition, And There Was Far More Drunkenness There Then Than Before; The Prohibition Of Pornography Has Much The Same Effect.

In Human Relations One Should Penetrate To The Core Of Loneliness In Each Person And Speak To That.

The Rules Of Logic Are To Mathematics What Those Of Structure Are To Architecture.

It's Easy To Fall In Love. The Hard Part Is Finding Someone To Catch You.

Falling In Love

New Relationship

Beggars Do Not Envy Millionaires, Though Of Course They Will Envy Other Beggars Who Are More Successful.

We May Often Do As We Please - But We Cannot Please As We Please.

It Is Likely That America Will Be More Important During The Next Century Or Two, But After That It May Well Be The Turn Of China.

If A Man Is Offered A Fact Which Goes Against His Instincts, He Will Scrutinize It Closely, And Unless The Evidence Is Overwhelming, He Will Refuse To Believe It. If, On The Other Hand, He Is Offered Something Which Affords A Reason For Acting In Accordance To His Instincts, He Will Accept It Even On The Slightest Evidence. The Origin Of Myths Is Explained In This Way.

The Argument Against The Persecution Of Opinion Does Not Depend Upon What The Excuse For Persecution May Be. The Argument Is That We None Of Us Know All Truth, That The Discovery Of New Truth Is Promoted By Free Discussion And Rendered Very Difficult By Suppression.

The Whiter My Hair Becomes, The More Ready People Are To Believe What I Say.

It Would Have Been Very Much Better For The World If Britain Had Remained Neutral And The Germans Had Won A Quick Victory. We Should Not Have Had Either The Nazis Or The Communists If That Had Happened.

Religion May In Most Of Its Forms Be Defined As The Belief That The Gods Are On The Side Of The Government.

There Is Little Of The True Philosophic Spirit In Aquinas. He Does Not, Like The Platonic Socrates, Set Out To Follow Wherever The Argument May Lead.

It Was The Duty Of Wives To Submit To Husbands, Not Of Husbands To Submit To Wives. . . Men Have Stronger Muscles Than Women.

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

Science Is At No Moment Quite Right, But It Is Seldom Quite Wrong, And Has, As A Rule, A Better Chance Of Being Right Than The Theories Of The Unscientific. It Is, Therefore, Rational To Accept It Hypothetically.

My Whole Religion Is This: Do Every Duty, And Expect No Reward For It, Either Here Or Hereafter.

In The First Place A Philosophical Proposition Must Be General. It Must Not Deal Specially With Things On The Surface Of The Earth, Or Within The Solar System, Or With Any Other Portion Of Space And Time. . . . This Brings Us To A Second Characteristic Of Philosophical Propositions, Namely That They Must Be A Priori. A Philosophical Proposition Must Be Such As Can Neither Be Proved Nor Disproved By Empirical Evidence. . . . Philosophy, If What Has Been Said Is Correct, Becomes Indistinguishable From Logic As That Word Has Now Come To Be Used.

The Man Who Has Fed The Chicken Every Day Throughout Its Life At Last Wrings Its Neck Instead, Showing That More Refined Views As To The Uniformity Of Nature Would Have Been Useful To The Chicken.

A Truer Image Of The World, I Think, Is Obtained By Picturing Things As Entering Into The Stream Of Time From An Eternal World Outside, Than From A View Which Regards Time As The Devouring Tyrant Of All That Is.

Mysticism Is, In Essence, Little More Than A Certain Intensity And Depth Of Feeling In Regard To What Is Believed About The Universe.

Life Seems To Me Essentially Passion, Conflict, Rage. It Is Only Intellect That Keeps Me Sane; Perhaps This Makes Me Overvalue Intellect Against Feeling.

Zeno Was Concerned With Three Problems... These Are The Problem Of The Infinitesimal, The Infinite, And Continuity.

I Believe Four Ingredients Are Necessary For Happiness: Health, Warm Personal Relations, Sufficient Means To Keep You From Want, And Successful Work.

The World Is Full Of Magical Things Patiently Waiting For Our Wits To Grow Sharper.

I Used, When I Was Younger, To Take My Holidays Walking. I Would Cover 25 Miles A Day, And When The Evening Came I Had No Need Of Anything To Keep Me From Boredom, Since The Delight Of Sitting Amply Sufficed.

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not.

You Could Live Without The Opera Singer, But Not Without The Services Of The Baker. On This Ground You Might Say That The Baker Performs A Greater Service; But No Lover Of Music Would Agree.

The Essence Of Life Is Doing Things For Their Own Sakes.

The Social Psychologist Of The Future Will Have A Number Of Classes Of School Children On Whom They Will Try Different Methods Of Producing An Unshakable Conviction That Snow Is Black. When The Technique Has Been Perfected, Every Government That Has Been In Charge Of Education For More Than One Generation Will Be Able To Control Its Subjects Securely Without The Need Of Armies Or Policemen.

The Process Of Philosophizing, To My Mind, Consists Mainly In Passing From Those Obvious, Vague, Ambiguous Things, That We Feel Quite Sure Of, To Something Precise, Clear, Definite, Which By Reflection And Analysis We Find Is Involved In The Vague Thing That We Start From, And Is, So To Speak, The Real Truth Of Which That Vague Thing Is A Sort Of Shadow.

Machines Have Altered Our Way Of Life, But Not Our Instincts. Consequently, There Is Maladjustment.

It Is No Credit To The Orthodox That They Do Not Now Believe All The Absurdities That Were Believed 150 Years Ago. The Gradual Emasculation Of The Christian Doctrine Has Been Effected In Spite Of The Most Vigorous Resistance, And Solely As The Result Of The Onslaughts Of Freethinkers.

I Am Not Myself In Any Degree Ashamed Of Having Changed My Opinions.

I Find It So Difficult Not To Hate, When I Do Not Hate I Feel We Few Are So Lonely In The World

The Legacy Of Greece To Western Philosophy Is Western Philosophy.

Many Orthodox People Speak As Though It Were The Business Of Sceptics To Disprove Received Dogmas Rather Than Of Dogmatists To Prove Them. This Is, Of Course, A Mistake.

We Know That The Exercise Of Virtue Should Be Its Own Reward, And It Seems To Follow That The Enduring Of It On The Part Of The Patient Should Be Its Own Punishment.

The Three Main Extra-rational Activities In Modern Life Are Religion, War, And Love. All These Are Extra-rational, But Love Is Not Anti-rational, That Is To Say, A Reasonable Man May Reasonably Rejoice In Its Existence

It Is Not My Prayer And Humility That You Cause Things To Go As You Wish, But By Acquiring A Knowledge Of Natural Laws.

There Is A Possibility In Human Minds Of Something Mysterious As The Night-wind, Deep As The Sea, Calm As The Stars, And Strong As Death, A Mystic Contemplation, The “intellectual Love Of God.” Those Who Have Known It Cannot Believe In Wars Any Longer, Or In Any Kind Of Hot Struggle. If I Could Give To Others What Has Come To Me In This Way, I Could Make Them Too Feel The Futility Of Fighting. But I Do Not Know How To Communicate It: When I Speak, They Stare, Applaud, Or Smile, But Do Not Understand.

Change Is One Thing, Progress Is Another.

There Are Two Ways Of Avoiding Fear: One Is By Persuading Ourselves That We Are Immune From Disaster, And The Other Is By The Practice Of Sheer Courage. The Latter Is Difficult, And To Everybody Becomes Impossible At A Certain Point. The Former Has Therefore Always Been More Popular. Primitive Magic Has The Purpose Of Securing Safety, Either By Injuring Enemies, Or By Protecting Oneself By Talismans, Spells, Or Incantations.

The Reformative Effect Of Punishment Is A Belief That Dies Hard, Chiefly I Think, Because It Is So Satisfying To Our Sadistic Impulses.

Any Philosophy Worth Taking Seriously Would Have To Be Built Upon A Firm Foundation Of Unyielding Despair.

Thomas Aquinas States Parenthetically, As Something Entirely Obvious, That Men Are More Rational Than Women. For My Part, I See No Evidence Of This.

Anything You're Good At Contributes To Happiness.

I Have Sought Love, First, Because It Brings Ecstasy – Ecstasy So Great That I Would Often Have Sacrificed All The Rest Of Life For A Few Hours Of That Joy. ... I Have Sought It, Finally, Because In The Union Of Love I Have Seen, In A Mystic Miniature, The Prefiguring Vision Of The Heaven That Saints And Poets Have Imagined.

Patriotism Which Has The Quality Of Intoxication Is A Danger Not Only To Its Native Land But To The World, And "my Country Never Wrong" Is An Even More Dangerous Maxim Than "my Country, Right Or Wrong."

A Generation That Cannot Endure Boredom Will Be A Generation Of Little Men, Of Men Unduly Divorced From The Slow Process Of Nature, Of Men In Whom Every Vital Impulse Slowly Withers As Though They Were Cut Flowers In A Vase.

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