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Aristotle's Metaphysics, Roughly Speaking, May Be Described As Plato Diluted By Common Sense. He Is Difficult Because Plato And Common Sense Do Not Mix Easily.

-Bertrand Russell

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Aristotle's Metaphysics, Roughly Speaking,

Bertrand Russell

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Aristotle's Metaphysics, Roughly Speaking, May Be Described As Plato Diluted By Common Sense. He Is Difficult Because Plato And Common Sense Do Not Mix Easily.

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I Resolved From The Beginning Of My Quest That I Would Not Be Misled By Sentiment And Desire Into Beliefs For Which There Was No Good Evidence.

Faith: A Firm Belief For Which There Is No Evidence.

The Criminal Law Has, From The Point Of View Of Thwarted Virtue, The Merit Of Allowing An Outlet For Those Impulses Of Aggression Which Cowardice, Disguised As Morality, Restrains In Their More Spontaneous Forms. War Has The Same Merit. You Must Not Kill You Neighbor, Whom Perhaps You Genuinely Hate, But By A Little Propaganda This Hate Can Be Transferred To Some Foreign Nation, Against Whom All Your Murderous Impulses Become Patriotic Heroism.

Facts Have To Be Discovered By Observation, Not By Reasoning

It Is Odd That Neither The Church Nor Modern Public Opinion Condemns Petting, Provided It Stops Short At A Certain Point. At What Point Sin Begins Is A Matter As To Which Casuists Differ. One Eminently Orthodox Catholic Divine Laid It Down That A Confessor May Fondle A Nun's Breasts, Provided He Does It Without Evil Intent. But I Doubt Whether Modern Authorities Would Agree With Him On This Point.

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.

Physics Is Mathematical Not Because We Know So Much About The Physical World, But Because We Know So Little; It Is Only Its Mathematical Properties That We Can Discover.

Good Nature Is, Of All Moral Qualities, The One That The World Needs Most, And Good Nature Is The Result Of Ease And Security, Not Of A Life Of Arduous Struggle.

I Once Saw A Photograph Of A Large Herd Of Wild Elephants In Central Africa Seeing An Airplane For The First Time, And All In A State Of Wild Collective Terror... As, However, There Were No Journalists Among Them, The Terror Died Down When The Airplane Was Out Of Sight.

Aristotle Is The Last Greek Philosopher Who Faces The World Cheerfully; After Him, All Have, In One Form Or Another, A Philosophy Of Retreat.

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 Really Useful Education Is That Which Follows The Direction Of The Child's Own Instinctive Interests, Supplying Knowledge For Which It Is Seeking, Not Dry, Detailed Information Wholly Out Of Relation To Its Spontaneous Desires.

A Great Many Worries Can Be Diminished By Realizing The Unimportance Of The Matter Which Is Causing Anxiety.

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

The Fundamental Defect Of Fathers, In Our Competitive Society, Is That They Want Their Children To Be A Credit To Them. We All Feel Instinctively, That Our Children's Success Reflect Glory Upon Ourselves, While Their Failures Make Us Feel Shame. Unfortunately, The Successes Which Cause Us To Swell With Pride Are Often Of An Undesirable Kind.... Neither Happiness Nor Virtue, But Worldly Success, Is What The Average Father Desires For His Children.

History Is Valuable, To Begin With, Because It Is True; And This, Though Not The Whole Of Its Value, Is The Foundation And Condition Of All The Rest. That All Knowledge, As Such, Is In Some Degree Good, Would Appear To Be At Least Probable; And The Knowledge Of Every Historical Fact Possesses This Element Of Goodness, Even If It Posses No Other.

The Scientific Attitude Of Mind Involves A Sweeping Away Of All Other Desires In The Interests Of The Desire To Know-it Involves Suppression Of Hopes And Fears, Loves And Hates, And The Whole Subjective Emotional Life, Until We Become Subdued To The Material, Able To See It Frankly, Without Preconceptions, Without Bias, Without Any Wish Except To See It As It Is, And Without Any Belief That What It Is Must Be Determined By Some Relation, Positive Or Negative, To What We Should Like It To Be, Or To What We Can Easily Imagine It To Be.

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.

In The Higher Walks Of Politics The Same Sort Of Thing Occurs. The Statesman Who Has Gradually Concentrated All Power Within Himself ... May Have Had Anything But A Public Motive... The Phrases Which Are Customary On The Platform And In The Party Press Have Gradually Come To Him To Seem To Express Truths, And He Mistakes The Rhetoric Of Partisanship For A Genuine Analysis Of Motives... He Retires From The World After The World Has Retired From Him.

[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.

Adventurous Men Enjoy Shipwrecks, Mutinies, Earthquakes, Conflagrations, And All Kinds Of Unpleasant Experiences. They Say To Themselves, For Example, 'so This Is What An Earthquake Is Like,' And It Gives Them Pleasure To Have Their Knowledge Of The World Increased By This New Item.

[industrialism's Soon Diminishing] Capacity To Supply Human Needs Could Be Prevented If Men Exercised Any Restraint Or Foresight In Their Present Frenzied Exploitation.

The First Essential Character [of Civilization], I Should Say, Is Forethought. This, Indeed, Is What Mainly Distinguishes Men From Brutes And Adults From Children.

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

My Sad Conviction Is That People Can Only Agree About What They're Not Really Interested In.

In The Great Depression, Things Could Only Be Set Right By Causing The Idle Plant To Work Again . . . Roosevelt . . . Spent Billions Of Public Money And Created A Huge Public Debt, But By So Doing He Revived Production And Brought His Country Out Of The Depression. Businessmen, Who In Spite Of Such A Sharp Lesson Continued To Believe In Old-fashioned Economics, Were Infinitely Shocked, And Although Roosevelt Saved Them From Ruin, They Continued To Curse Him And To Speak Of Him As 'the Madman In The White House.' . . . [it's One More] Striking Example Of Inability To Learn From Experience.

The Wise Man Thinks About His Troubles Only When There Is Some Purpose In Doing So; At Other Times He Thinks About Other Things, Or, If It Is Night, About Nothing At All.

It Has Become A Commonplace That Aggressiveness Also Often Has Its Roots In Fear. I Am Inclined To Think That This Theory Has Been Pushed Too Far. [...] The Type Of Aggressiveness That Is The Outcome Of Timidity Is Not, I Think, That Which Inspires Great Leaders; The Great Leaders, I Should Say, Have An Exceptional Self-confidence Which Is Not Only On The Surface, But Penetrates Deep Into The Subconscious.

Self Confidence

Since Adam And Eve Ate The Apple, Man Has Never Refrained From Any Folly Of Which He Was Capable.

Who Ever Heard A Theologian Preface His Creed, Or A Politician Conclude His Speech With An Estimate Of The Probable Error Of His Opinion?

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."

Nine-tenths Of The Activities Of A Modern Government Are Harmful; Therefore The Worse They Are Performed, The Better.

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.

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.

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

War Can Only Be Abolished By The Establishment Of A World Government.

World Government

Can A Society In Which Thought And Technique Are Scientific Persist For A Long Period, As, For Example, Ancient Egypt Persisted, Or Does It Necessarily Contain Within Itself Forces Which Must Bring Either Decay Or Explosion?

One Of The Commonest Things To Do With Savings Is To Lend Them To Some Government. In View Of The Fact That The Bulk Of The Public Expenditure Of Most Civilized Governments Consists In Payment For Past Wars Or Preparation For Future Wars, The Man Who Lends His Money To A Government Is In The Same Position As The Bad Men In Shakespeare Who Hire Murderers. The Net Result Of The Man's Economical Habits Is To Increase The Armed Forces Of The State To Which He Lends His Savings. Obviously It Would Be Better If He Spent The Money, Even If He Spent It In Drink Or Gambling.

(on A History Of Western Philosophy) I Was Sometimes Accused By Reviewers Of Writing Not A True History But A Biased Account Of The Events That I Arbitrarily Chose To Write Of. But To My Mind, A Man Without A Bias Cannot Write Interesting History - If, Indeed, Such Man Exists.

But As The Work Proceeded I Was Continually Reminded Of The Fable About The Elephant And The Tortoise. Having Constructed An Elephant Upon Which The Mathematical World Could Rest, I Found The Elephant Tottering, And Proceeded To Construct A Tortoise To Keep The Elephant From Falling. But The Tortoise Was Not More Secure Than The Elephant, And After Some Twenty Years Of Very Arduous Toil, I Came To The Conclusion That There Was Nothing More That I Could Do In The Way Of Making Mathematical Knowledge Indubitable.

Liberty Is The Right To Do What I Like; Licence, The Right To Do What You Like.

What Vanity Needs For Its Satisfaction Is Glory, And It's Easy To Have Glory Without Power.

Any Pleasure That Does No Harm To Other People Is To Be Valued.

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.

Among The Tibetans, One Wife Has Many Husbands, Because Men Are Too Poor To Support A Whole Wife.

To Write Tragedy, A Man Must Feel Tragedy. To Feel Tragedy, A Man Must Be Aware Of The World In Which He Lives. Not Only With His Mind, But With His Blood And Sinews.

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

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.

All Traditional Logic Habitually Assumes That Precise Symbols Are Being Employed. It Is Therefore Not Applicable To This Terrestial Life But Only To An Imagined Celestial Existence... Logic Takes Us Nearer To Heaven Than Other Studies.

Three Passions, Simple But Overwhelmingly Strong, Have Governed My Life: The Longing For Love, The Search For Knowledge, And Unbearable Pity For The Suffering Of Mankind.

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

Have No Respect For The Authority Of Others, For There Are Always Contrary Authorities To Be Found

The Best Practical Advice I Can Give To The Present Generation Is To Practice The Virtue Which The Christians Call Love.

Do Not Use Power To Suppress Opinions You Think Pernicious, For If You Do The Opinions Will Suppress You.

The Supreme Maxim In Scientific Philosophising Is This: Wherever Possible, Logical Constructions Are To Be Substituted For Inferred Entities.

The Essence Of Education Is That It Is A Change Effected In The Organism To Satisfy The Operator.

Even In Civilized Mankind Faint Traces Of Monogamous Instinct Can Be Perceived.

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 Shall Say That We Have Acquaintance With Anything Of Which We Are Directly Aware, Without The Intermediary Of Any Process Of Inference Of Any Knowledge Of Truths.

Most People Would Sooner Die Than Think; In Fact, They Do So.

How About Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was It Really He Who Ate The Apple? Or Was It Homo Pekiniensis?

With The Introduction Of Agriculture Mankind Entered Upon A Long Period Of Meanness, Misery, And Madness, From Which They Are Only Now Being Freed By The Beneficent Operation Of The Machine.

What The World Needs Is Not Dogma But An Attitude Of Scientific Inquiry Combined With A Belief That The Torture Of Millions Is Not Desirable, Whether Inflicted By Stalin Or By A Deity Imagined In The Likeness Of The Believer

European Travellers Find The Japanese A Smiling Race.

Punctuality Is A Quality The Need Of Which Is Bound Up With Social Co-operation.

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

The Moral Thing I Should Wish To Say To Them Is Very Simple; I Should Say: "love Is Wise - Hatred Is Foolish." In This World, Which Is Getting More And More Closely Interconnected, We Have To Learn To Tolerate Each Other.

Religion Is Based, I Think, Primarily And Mainly Upon Fear.

Science And Religion

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.

It [is] Possible To Suppose That, If Russia Is Allowed To Have Peace, An Amazing Industrial Development May Take Place, Making Russia A Rival Of The United States.

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

The Most Essential Characteristic Of Scientific Technique Is That It Proceeds From Experiment, Not From Tradition. The Experimental Habit Of Mind Is A Difficult One For Most People To Maintain; Indeed, The Science Of One Generation Has Already Become The Tradition Of The Next

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.

Indignation Is A Submission Of Our Thoughts, But Not Of Our Desires.

Righteous Indignation

The First Effect Of Emancipation From The Church Was Not To Make Men Think Rationally, But To Open Their Minds To Every Sort Of Antique Nonsense

I Am Aware That Many Divines Are Far More Marvelous Than I Am, And That I Cannot Wholly Appreciate Merits So Far Transcending My Own. Nevertheless, Even After Making Allowances Under This Head, I Cannot But Think That Omnipotence Operating Through All Eternity Might Have Produced Something Better.

I Do Not Myself Feel That Any Person Who Is Really Profoundly Humane Can Believe In Everlasting Punishment.

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.

All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation.

Those Who Advocate Common Usage In Philosophy Sometimes Speak In A Manner That Suggests The Mystique Of The 'common Man.'

But I Simply Can't Stand A View Limited To This Earth, I Feel Life Is So Small Unless It Has Windows Into Other Worlds...i Like Mathematics Largely Because It Is Not Human.

It Is A Natural Propensity To Attribute Misfortune To Someone's Malignity.

When You Meet With Opposition, Even If It Should Be From Your Husband Or Your Children, Endeavor To Overcome It By Argument And Not By Authority, For A Victory Dependent Upon Authority Is Unreal And Illusory.

No Great Achievement Is Possible Without Persistent Work.

Mathematics Takes Us Into The Region Of Absolute Necessity, To Which Not Only The Actual Word, But Every Possible Word, Must Conform.

A Life Which Goes Excessively Against Natural Impulse Is... Likely To Involve Effects Of Strain That May Be Quite As Bad As Indulgence In Forbidden Impulses Would Have Been. People Who Live A Life Which Is Unnatural Beyond A Point Are Likely To Be Filled With Envy, Malice And Uncharitableness.

The More We Realize Our Minuteness And Our Impotence In The Face Of Cosmic Forces, The More Amazing Becomes What Human Beings Have Achieved.

I Believe That When I Die I Shall Rot, And Nothing Of My Ego Will Survive. I Am Not Young, And I Love Life. But I Should Scorn To Shiver With Terror At The Thought Of Annihilation. Happiness Is Nonetheless True Happiness Because It Must Come To An End, Nor Do Thought And Love Lose Their Value Because They Are Not Everlasting.

I Was Told That The Chinese Said They Would Bury Me By The Western Lake And Build A Shrine To My Memory. I Have Some Slight Regret That This Did Not Happen, As I Might Have Become A God, Which Would Have Been Very Chic For An Atheist.

Measures Of Sterilization Should, In My Opinion, Be Very Definitely Confined To Persons Who Are Mentally Defective

Government Can Easily Exist Without Laws, But Law Cannot Exist Without Government.

The Above Proposition Is Occasionally Useful.

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.

It Is For This Reason That Rationality Is Of Supreme Importance To The Well-being Of The Human Species...even More, In Those Less Fortunate Times In Which It Is Despised And Rejected As The Vain Dream Of Men Who Lack The Virility To Kill Where They Cannot Agree.

If A Black Death Could Be Spread Throughout The World Once In Every Generation Survivors Could Procreate Freely Without Making The World Too Full.

The Fundamental Defect Of Fathers, In Our Competitive Society, Is That They Want Their Children To Be A Credit To Them.

A Man Who Has Once Perceived, However Temporarily And However Briefly, What Makes Greatness Of Soul, Can No Longer Be Happy If He Allows Himself To Be Petty, Self-seeking, Troubled By Trivial Misfortunes, Dreading What Fate May Have In Store For Him. The Man Capable Of Greatness Of Soul Will Open Wide The Windows Of His Mind, Letting The Winds Blow Freely Upon It From Every Portion Of The Universe.

Right Conduct Can Never, Except By Some Rare Accident, Be Promoted By Ignorance Or Hindered By Knowledge.

Human Life, Its Growth, Its Hopes, Fears, Loves, Et Cetera, Are The Result Of Accidents

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid.

I Do Not Pretend To Start With Precise Questions. I Do Not Think You Can Start With Anything Precise. You Have To Achieve Such Precision As You Can, As You Go Along.

[there Has Been] Every Kind Of Cruelty Practiced Upon All Sorts Of People In The Name Of Religion.

Neither A Man Nor A Crowd Nor A Nation Can Be Trusted To Act Humanely Or To Think Sanely Under The Influence Of A Great Fear.

The Mormons Had A Divine Revelation In Favour Of Polygamy, But Under Pressure From The United States Government They Discovered That The Revelation Was Not Binding.

Divine Revelation

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

It Is Impossible To Read In America, Except On A Train, Because Of The Telephone. Everyone Has A Telephone, And It Rings All Day And Most Of The Night.

Both In Thought And In Feeling, Even Though Time Be Real, To Realise The Unimportance Of Time Is The Gate Of Wisdom.

Life Is Nothing But A Competition To Be The Criminal Rather Than The Victim.

Reason Is A Harmonising, Controlling Force Rather Than A Creative One.

Joy Of Life... Depends Upon A Certain Spontaneity In Regard To Sex. Where Sex Is Repressed, Only Work Remains, And A Gospel Of Work For Work's Sake Never Produced Any Work Worth Doing.

Perhaps The Nuclear Physicists Have Come So Near To The Ultimate Secrets That He Thinks It Time To Bring Their Activities To A Stop. And What Simpler Method Could He Devise Than To Let Them Carry Their Ingenuity To The Point Where They Exterminate The Human Race?

Analytic It Is Clear That The Definition Of "logic" Or "mathematics" Must Be Sought By Trying To Give A New Definition Of The Old Notion Of "analytic" Propositions.

Arithmetic Must Be Discovered In Just The Same Sense In Which Columbus Discovered The West Indies, And We No More Create Numbers Than He Created The Indians.

Nothing Is So Exhausting As Indecision, And Nothing Is So Futile.

Procrastination

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

An Honest Politician Will Not Be Tolerated By A Democracy Unless He Is Very Stupid ... Because Only A Very Stupid Man Can Honestly Share The Prejudices Of More Than Half The Nation.

When People Begin To Philosophize They Seem To Think It Necessary To Make Themselves Artificially Stupid.

Nothing Of Importance Is Ever Achieved Without Discipline. I Feel Myself Sometimes Not Wholly In Sympathy With Some Modern Educational Theorists, Because I Think That They Underestimate The Part That Discipline Plays. But The Discipline You Have In Your Life Should Be One Determined By Your Own Desires And Your Own Needs, Not Put Upon You By Society Or Authority.

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.

The Secret To Happiness Is To Face The Fact That The World Is Horrible.

The Pleasure Of Work Is Open To Anyone Who Can Develop Some Specialised Skill, Provided That He Can Get Satisfaction From The Exercise Of His Skill Without Demanding Universal Applause.

There Will Still Be Things That Machines Cannot Do. They Will Not Produce Great Art Or Great Literature Or Great Philosophy; They Will Not Be Able To Discover The Secret Springs Of Happiness In The Human Heart; They Will Know Nothing Of Love And Friendship.

The Whole Conception Of A God Is A Conception Derived From The Ancient Oriental Despotisms. It Is A Conception Quite Unworthy Of Free Men. We Ought To Stand Up And Look The World Frankly In The Face. We Ought To Make The Best We Can Of The World, And If It Is Not So Good As We Wish, After All It Will Still Be Better Than What These Others Have Made Of It In All These Ages.

It Is Undesirable To Believe A Proposition When There Is No Ground Whatever For Supposing It True

I Am As Drunk As A Lord, But Then, I Am One, So What Does It Matter ?

The Place Of The Father In The Modern Suburban Family Is A Very Small One, Particularly If He Plays Golf.

I Do So Hate To Leave This World.

Unless You Assume A God, The Question Of Life's Purpose Is Meaningless.

The Atomists , Unlike Socrates , Plato , And Aristotle , Sought To Explain The World Without Introducing The Notion Of Purpose Or Final Cause.

Diet, Injections, And Injunctions Will Combine, From A Very Early Age, To Produce The Sort Of Character And The Sort Of Beliefs That The Authorities Consider Desirable, And Any Serious Criticism Of The Powers That Be Will Become Psychologically Impossible. Even If All Are Miserable, All Will Believe Themselves Happy, Because The Government Will Tell Them That They Are So.

It Is Not Known Why The Lord Made The Human Body As He Did, Since One Might Suppose That Omnipotence Could Have Made It Such As Would Not Have Shocked The Nice People.

The Very Best Proof That Something Can Be Done Is That Someone Has Already Done It.

It Is Essential To Happiness That Our Way Of Living Should Spring From Our Own Deep Impulses And Not From The Accidental Tastes And Desires Of Those Who Happen To Be Our Neighbors, Or Even Our Relations.

But Courage In Fighting Is By No Means The Only Form, Nor Perhaps Even The Most Important. There Is Courage In Facing Poverty, Courage In Facing Derision, Courage In Facing The Hostility Of One's Own Herd. In These, The Bravest Soldiers Are Often Lamentably Deficient. And Above All There Is The Courage To Think Calmly And Rationally In The Face Of Danger, And To Control The Impulse Of Panic Fear Or Panic Rage.

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

Mathematical Logic

I Can Only Say That, While My Own Opinions As To Ethics Do Not Satisfy Me, Other People's Satisfy Me Still Less.

Modern American Politicians Have The Same Cowardice About Denying An Equally Bloodthirsty Even Sillier God, Jehovah. None Of Us Would Seriously Consider The Possibility That All The Gods Of Homer Really Exist... I Think That All Of Us Would Say In Regard To Those Gods That We Were Atheists. In Regard To The Christian God, I Should, I Think, Take Exactly The Same Line.

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.

Tobacco . . . Is Not Prohibited In The Scriptures, Though, As Samuel Butler Points Out, St. Paul Would No Doubt Have Denounced It If He Had Known Of It.

The Teacher, Like The Artist, The Philosopher, And The Man Of Letters, Can Only Perform His Work Adequately If He Feels Himself To Be An Individual Directed By An Inner Creative Impulse, Not Dominated And Fettered By An Outside Authority.

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

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.

A Generation Educated In Fearless Freedom Will Have Wider And Bolder Hopes Than Are Possible To Us

Modern Life Cannot Be Constructed On . . . Physically Strenuous Principles. A Great Deal Of Work Is Sedentary, And Most Manual Work Exercises Only A Few Specialized Muscles.

The First Step In Wisdom, As Well As In Morality, Is To Open The Windows Of The Ego As Wide As Possible.

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.

If The State Does Not Acquire Supremacy Over [vast Private] Enterprises, It Becomes Their Puppet, And They Become The Real State.

There Is An Artist Imprisoned In Each One Of Us. Let Him Loose To Spread Joy Everywhere.

Artists Are On The Average Less Happy Than Men Of Science.

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

If All Our Happiness Is Bound Up Entirely In Our Personal Circumstances It Is Difficult Not To Demand Of Life More Than It Has To Give.

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

All Religions Are Both Harmful And Untrue.

People Will Tell Us That Without The Consolations Of Religion They Would Be Intolerably Unhappy. So Far As This Is True, It Is A Coward's Argument. Nobody But A Coward Would Consciously Choose To Live In A Fool's Paradise. When A Man Suspects His Wife Of Infidelity, He Is Not Thought The Better Of For Shutting His Eyes To The Evidence. And I Cannot See Why Ignoring Evidence Should Be Contemptible In One Case And Admirable In The Other.

To Abandon The Struggle For Private Happiness, To Expel All Eagerness Of Temporary Desire, To Burn With Passion For Eternal Things-this Is Emancipation, And This Is The Free Man's Worship... United With His Fellow Men By The Strongest Of All Ties, The Tie Of A Common Doom, The Free Man Finds That A New Vision Is With Him Always, Shedding Over Every Daily Task The Light Of Love.

Why Repeat The Old Errors, If There Are So Many New Errors To Commit?

I Think We Ought Always To Entertain Our Opinions With Some Measure Of Doubt. I Shouldn't Wish People Dogmatically To Believe Any Philosophy, Not Even Mine.

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

Man Can Be Scientifically Manipulated.

Of Course Not. After All, I May Be Wrong.

The World That I Should Wish To See Would Be One Freed From The Virulence Of Group Hostilities And Capable Of Realizing That Happiness For All Is To Be Derived Rather From Co-operation Than From Strife. I Should Wish To See A World In Which Education Aimed At Mental Freedom Rather Than Imprisoning The Minds Of The Young In Rigid Armor Of Dogma Calculated To Protect Them Through Life Against The Shafts Of Impartial Evidence.

Philosophers, For The Most Part, Are Constitutionally Timid, And Dislike The Unexpected. Few Of Them Would Be Genuinely Happy As Pirates Or Burglars. Accordingly They Invent Systems Which Make The Future Calculable, At Least In Its Main Outlines.

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

You, Your Families, Your Friends And Your Countries Are To Be Exterminated By The Common Decision Of A Few Brutal But Powerful Men. To Please These Men, All The Private Affections, All The Public Hopes, All That Has Been Achieved In Art, And Knowledge And Thought And All That Might Be Achieved Hereafter Is To Be Wiped Out Forever. Our Ruined Lifeless Planet Will Continue For Countless Ages To Circle Aimlessly Round The Sun Unredeemed By The Joys And Loves, The Occasional Wisdom And The Power To Create Beauty Which Have Given Value To Human Life.

Admit At Least One Painful Truth To Yourself Every Day. Teach Yourself To Feel That Life Would Still Be Worth Living Even If You Were Not Immeasurably Superior To All Your Friends. Exercises Of This Sort, Prolonged Through Several Years, Will At Last Enable You To Admit Facts Without Flinching, And Will, In So Doing, Free You From The Empire Of Fear Over A Very Large Field.

There Can't Be A Practical Reason For Believing Something That Is Not True.

It Is Preoccupation With Possessions, More Than Anything Else, That Prevents Us From Living Freely And Nobly.

Happiness Is Not Best Achieved By Those Who Seek It Directly.

Mathematics Rightly Viewed Possesses Not Only Truth But Supreme Beauty.

Western Philosophy

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.

You Must Believe That You Can Help Bring About A Better World.

In Science The Successors Stand Upon The Shoulders Of Their Predecessors; Where One Man Of Supreme Genius Has Invented A Method, A Thousand Lesser Men Can Apply It. ... In Art Nothing Worth Doing Can Be Done Without Genius; In Science Even A Very Moderate Capacity Can Contribute To A Supreme Achievement.

Laughter Is The Most Inexpensive And Most Effective Wonder Drug. Laughter Is A Universal Medicine.

Remote From Human Passions, Remote Even From The Pitiful Facts Of Nature, The Generations Have Gradually Created An Ordered Cosmos [mathematics], Where Pure Thought Can Dwell In Its Natural Home.

Certain Characteristics Of The Subject Are Clear. To Begin With, We Do Not In This Subject Deal With Particular Things Or Particular Properties: We Deal Formally With What Can Be Said About Any Thing Or Any Property. We Are Prepared To Say That One And One Are Two, But Not That Socrates And Plato Are Two.

The White Tails Of Rabbits, According To Some Theologians, Have A Purpose, Namely To Make It Easier For Sportsmen To Shoot Them.

Love Should Be A Tree Whose Roots Are Deep In The Earth, But Whose Branches Extend Into Heaven.

To Understand The Actual World As It Is, Not As We Should Wish It To Be, Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

I Am Looking Forward Very Much To Getting Back To Cambridge, And Being Able To Say What I Think And Not To Mean What I Say: Two Things Which At Home Are Impossible. Cambridge Is One Of The Few Places Where One Can Talk Unlimited Nonsense And Generalities Without Anyone Pulling One Up Or Confronting One With Them When One Says Just The Opposite The Next Day.

The True Spirit Of Delight, The Exaltation, The Sense Of Being More Than Man, Which Is The Touchstone Of The Highest Excellence, Is To Be Found In Mathematics As Surely As Poetry.

The Resistance To A New Idea Increases By The Square Of Its Importance.

My Own View On Religion Is . . . It Helped In Early Days To Fix The Calendar, And . . . To Chronicle Eclipses . . . These Two Services I Am Prepared To Acknowledge.

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 Taboo Against Nakedness Is An Obstacle To A Decent Attitude On The Subject Of Sex.

I Must, Before I Die, Find Some Way To Say The Essential Thing That Is In Me, That I Have Never Said Yet -- A Thing That Is Not Love Or Hate Or Pity Or Scorn, But The Very Breath Of Life, Fierce And Coming From Far Away, Bringing Into Human Life The Vastness And The Fearful Passionless Force Of Non-human Things.

Dogmatism And Skepticism Are Both, In A Sense, Absolute Philosophies; One Is Certain Of Knowing, The Other Of Not Knowing. What Philosophy Should Dissipate Is Certainty, Whether Of Knowledge Or Ignorance.

No One Gossips About Other People's Secret Virtues.

Keeping Secrets

This Idea Of Weapons Of Mass Extermination Is Utterly Horrible And Is Something Which No One With One Spark Of Humanity Can Tolerate.

More Important Than The Curriculum Is The Question Of The Methods Of Teaching And The Spirit In Which The Teaching Is Given

A Smile Happens In A Flash, But Its Memory Can Last A Lifetime.

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little.

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

Of All Forms Of Caution, Caution In Love Is Perhaps The Most Fatal To True Happiness.

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.

Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy Of Logical Atomism We've Associated That Word Philosophy With Academic Study That In Its Own Way Has Gotten So Far Beyond The Layman That If You Read Contemporary Philosophy You've No Clue, Because It's Almost Become Math. And It's Odd That If You Don't Do That And You Call Yourself A Philosopher That You Always Get 'homespun' Attached To It.

I Did Not Know I Loved You Until I Heard Myself Telling So, For One Instance I Thought, "good God, What Have I Said?" And Then I Knew It Was True.

Religion: A Set Of Beliefs Held As Dogmas, Dominating The Conduct Of Life, Going Beyond Or Contrary To Evidence, And Inculcated By Methods Which Are Emotional Or Authoritarian, Not Intellectual.

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

Falling In Love

New Relationship

The Immense Majority Of Intellectually Eminent Men Disbelieve In The Christian Religion, But They Conceal The Fact In Public, Because They Are Afraid Of Losing Their Incomes.

The Significance Of A Fact Is Relative To [the General Body Of Scientific] Knowledge. To Say That A Fact Is Significant In Science, Is To Say That It Helps To Establish Or Refute Some General Law; For Science, Though It Starts From Observation Of The Particular, Is Not Concerned Essentially With The Particular, But With The General. A Fact, In Science, Is Not A Mere Fact, But An Instance. In This The Scientist Differs From The Artist, Who, If He Deigns To Notice Facts At All, Is Likely To Notice Them In All Their Particularity.

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