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At The Age Of Eleven, I Began Euclid, With My Brother As My Tutor. This Was One Of The Great Events Of My Life, As Dazzling As First Love. I Had Not Imagined There Was Anything So Delicious In The World. From That Moment Until I Was Thirty-eight, Mathematics Was My Chief Interest And My Chief Source Of Happiness.

-Bertrand Russell

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At The Age Of

Bertrand Russell

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At The Age Of Eleven, I Began Euclid, With My Brother As My Tutor. This Was One Of The Great Events Of My Life, As Dazzling As First Love. I Had Not Imagined There Was Anything So Delicious In The World. From That Moment Until I Was Thirty-eight, Mathematics Was My Chief Interest And My Chief Source Of Happiness.

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Truth Is A Shining Goddess, Always Veiled, Always Distant, Never Wholly Approachable, But Worthy Of All The Devotion Of Which The Human Spirit Is Capable.

None But A Coward Dares To Boast That He Has Never Known Fear.

What Is Matter? Never Mind.

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.

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.

To Modern Educated People, It Seems Obvious That Matters Of Fact Are To Be Ascertained By Observation, Not By Consulting Ancient Authorities. But This Is An Entirely Modern Conception, Which Hardly Existed Before The Seventeenth Century.

In The Daily Lives Of Most Men And Women, Fear Plays A Greater Part Than Hope: They Are More Filled With The Thought Of The Possessions That Others May Take From Them, Than Of The Joy That They Might Create In Their Own Lives And In The Lives With Which They Come In Contact. It Is Not So That Life Should Be Lived.

It Is In The Nature Of Imperialism That Citizens Of The Imperial Power Are Always Among The Last To Know-or Care-about Circumstances In The Colonies.

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.

On The One Hand, Philosophy Is To Keep Us Thinking About Things That We May Come To Know, And On The Other Hand To Keep Us Modestly Aware Of How Much That Seems Like Knowledge Isn't Knowledge

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.

Every Man, Wherever He Goes, Is Encompassed By A Cloud Of Comforting Convictions, Which Move With Him Like Flies On A Summer Day.

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

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.

Most People Believe In God Because They Have Been Taught From Early Infancy To Do It, And That Is The Main Reason. Then I Think That The Next Most Powerful Reason Is The Wish For Safety.

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

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.

I Mean By Intellectual Integrity The Habit Of Deciding Vexed Questions In Accordance With The Evidence, Or Of Leaving Them Undecided Where The Evidence Is Inconclusive. This Virtue, Though It Is Underestimated By Almost All Adherents Of Any System Of Dogma, Is To My Mind Of The Very Greatest Social Importance And Far More Likely To Benefit The World Than Christianity Or Any Other System Of Organized Beliefs.

Civilized Life Has Altogether Grown Too Tame, And, If It Is To Be Stable, It Must Provide A Harmless Outlets For The Impulses Which Our Remote Ancestors Satisfied In Hunting.

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

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

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.

More Cranks Take Up Unfashionable Errors Than Unfashionable Truths.

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

All Forms Of Fear Produce Fatigue.

Organized People Are Just Too Lazy To Look For Things

Philosophy Is That Part Of Science Which At Present People Chose To Have Opinions About, But Which They Have No Knowledge About. Therefore Every Advance In Knowledge Robs Philosophy Of Some Problems Which Formerly It Had ...and Will Belong To Science.

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little.

I Think People Who Are Unhappy Are Always Proud Of Being So, And Therefore Do Not Like To Be Told That There Is Nothing Grand About Their Unhappiness. A Man Who Is Melancholy Because Lack Of Exercise Has Upset His Liver Always Believes That It Is The Loss Of God, Or The Menace Of Bolshevism, Or Some Such Dignified Cause That Makes Him Sad. When You Tell People That Happiness Is A Simple Matter, They Get Annoyed With You.

Love And Knowledge Led Upwards To The Heavens.

Our Beliefs Are, However, Often Contrary To Fact.

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.

If The West Can Claim Superiority In Anything, It Is . . . In Science And Scientific Technique.

There Is As Much Difference Between A Collection Of Mentally Free Citizens And A Community Molded By Modern Methods Of Propaganda As There Is Between A Heap Of Raw Materials And A Battleship.

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.

We Must Be Skeptical Even Of Our Skepticism.

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

Falling In Love

New Relationship

I Do Not Think Any Reasonable Person Can Doubt That In India, China And Japan, If The Knowledge Of Birth Control Existed, The Birthrate Would Fall Very Rapidly

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

Orthodoxy Is The Death Of Intelligence.

I Do Not Pretend That Birth Control Is The Only Way In Which Population Can Be Kept From Increasing. There Are Others, Which, One Must Suppose, Opponents Of Birth Control Would Prefer.

One Of The Symptoms Of Approaching Nervous Breakdown Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important, And That To Take A Holiday Would Bring All Kinds Of Disaster. If I Were A Medical Man, I Should Prescribe A Holiday To Any Patient Who Considered His Or Her Work Important.

My Own View On Religion Is That Of Lucretius. I Regard It As A Disease Born Of Fear And As A Source Of Untold Misery To The Human Race.

William James Describes A Man Who Got The Experience From Laughing-gas; Whenever He Was Under Its Influence, He Knew The Secret Of The Universe, But When He Came To, He Had Forgotten It. At Last, With Immense Effort, He Wrote Down The Secret Before The Vision Had Faded. When Completely Recovered, He Rushed To See What He Had Written. It Was 'a Smell Of Petroleum Prevails Throughout'.

America... Where Law And Custom Alike Are Based Upon The Dreams Of Spinsters...

Freedom Of Opinion Can Only Exist When The Government Thinks Itself Secure.

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.

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.

If The Youth Is Content To Abandon His Previous Associates And To Throw In His Lot Whole-heartedly With The Rulers, He May, After Suitable Tests, Be Promoted, But If He Shows Any Regrettable Solidarity With His Previous Associates, The Rulers Will Reluctantly Conclude That There Is Nothing To Be Done With Him Except To Send Him To The Lethal Chamber Before His Ill-disciplined Intelligence Has Had Time To Spread Revolt. This Will Be A Painful Duty To The Rulers, But I Think They Will Not Shrink From Performing It.

There Are Three Ways Of Securing A Society That Shall Be Stable As Regards Population. The First Is That Of Birth Control, The Second That Of Infanticide Or Really Destructive Wars, And The Third That Of General Misery Except For A Powerful Minority.

It Is, Of Course, Clear That A Country With A Large Foreign Population Must Endeavour, Through Its Schools, To Assimilate The Children Of Immigrants. It Is, However, Unfortunate That A Large Part Of This Process Should Be Effected By Means Of A Somewhat Blatant Nationalism.

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

Against The Vast Majority Of My Countrymen, Even At This Moment, In The Name Of Humanity And Civilization, I Protest Against Our Share In The Destruction Of Germany. A Month Ago Europe Was A Peaceful Comity Of Nations; If An Englishman Killed A German, He Was Hanged. Now, If An Englishman Kills A German, Or If A German Kills An Englishman, He Is A Patriot, Who Has Deserved Well Of His Country.

What Men Really Want Is Not Knowledge But Certainty.

There Is No Logical Impossibility In The Hypothesis That The World Sprang Into Being Five Minutes Ago, Exactly As It Then Was, With A Population That "remembered" A Wholly Unreal Past. There Is No Logically Necessary Connection Between Events At Different Times; Therefore Nothing That Is Happening Now Or Will Happen In The Future Can Disprove The Hypothesis That The World Began Five Minutes Ago.

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

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

Although This May Seem A Paradox, All Exact Science Is Based On The Idea Of Approximation. If A Man Tells You He Knows A Thing Exactly, Then You Can Be Safe In Inferring That You Are Speaking To An Inexact Man.

Is The Set Of All Sets Which Are Not Members Of Themselves A Member Of Itself?

All Serious Innovation Is Only Rendered Possible By Some Accident Enabling Unpopular Persons To Survive.

At The Age Of Eleven, I Began Euclid, With My Brother As My Tutor. This Was One Of The Great Events Of My Life, As Dazzling As First Love. I Had Not Imagined There Was Anything So Delicious In The World. From That Moment Until I Was Thirty-eight, Mathematics Was My Chief Interest And My Chief Source Of Happiness.

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

To A Mind Of Sufficient Intellectual Power, The Whole Of Mathematics Would Appear Trivial, As Trivial As The Statement That A Four-footed Animal Is An Animal.

Whenever One Finds Oneself Inclined To Bitterness, It Is A Sign Of Emotional Failure.

The Desire To Understand The World And The Desire To Reform It Are The Two Great Engines Of Progress, Without Which Human Society Would Stand Still Or Retrogress.

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

Look At Me. Look At Me Is One Of The Fundamental Desires Of Human Heart.

The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation.

In Spreading His Ideas, Plato Was Willing To Employ Emotional Appeals, State Propaganda, And The Use Of Force.

A Hallucination Is A Fact, Not An Error; What Is Erroneous Is A Judgment Based Upon It.

Protagoras Did Not Know If The Gods Exist, But He Held In Any Case They Ought To Be Worshiped. Philosophy, According To Him, Had Nothing Edifying To Teach, And For The Survival Of Morals We Must Rely Upon The Thoughtlessness Of The Majority And Their Willingness To Believe What They Had Been Taught.

All Human Activity Is Prompted By Desire.

Ironclads And Maxim Guns Must Be The Ultimate Arbiters Of Metaphysical Truth.

I Think It Would Be Just To Say The Most Essential Characteristic Of Mind Is Memory, Using This Word In Its Broadest Sense To Include Every Influence Of Past Experience On Present Reactions.

Into Every Tidy Scheme For Arranging The Pattern Of Human Life, It Is Necessary To Inject A Certain Dose Of Anarchism.

Man Can Be Scientifically Manipulated.

The Best Life Is The One In Which The Creative Impulses Play The Largest Part And The Possessive Impulses The Smallest.

And If There Were A God, I Think It Very Unlikely That He Would Have Such An Uneasy Vanity As To Be Offended By Those Who Doubt His Existence

It Is The Things For Which There Is No Evidence That Are Believed With Passion.

The Root Of The Matter Is A Very Simple And Old Fashioned Thing... Love Or Compassion. If You Feel This, You Have A Motive For Existence, A Guide For Action, A Reason For Courage, An Imperative Necessity For Intellectual Honesty.

The Demand For Certainty Is One Which Is Natural To Man, But Is Nevertheless An Intellectual Vice.

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.

The Fundamental Principle In The Analysis Of Propositions Containing Descriptions Is This: Every Proposition Which We Can Understand Must Be Composed Wholly Of Constituents With Which We Are Acquainted.

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

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.

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.

The Examination System, And The Fact That Instruction Is Treated Mainly As A Training For A Livelihood, Leads The Young To Regard Knowledge From A Purely Utilitarian Point Of View As The Road To Money, Not As The Gateway To Wisdom.

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.

The Whole Problem With The World Is That Fools And Fanatics Are Always So Certain Of Themselves, And Wiser People So Full Of Doubts.

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.

When Anaesthetics Were Invented They Were Thought To Be Wicked As Being An Attempt To Thwart God's Will. Insanity Was Thought To Be Due To Diabolic Possession, And It Was Believed That Demons Inhabiting A Madman Could Be Driven Out By Inflicting Pain Upon Him, And So Making Them Uncomfortable. In Pursuit Of This Opinion, Lunatics Were Treated For Years On End With Systematic And Conscientious Brutality.

Teachers Are More Than Any Other Group The Guardians Of Civilization.

St. Paul Introduced An Entirely Novel View Of Marriage, That It Existed Primarily To Prevent The Sin Of Fornication. It Is Just As If One Were To Maintain That The Sole Reason For Baking Bread Is To Prevent People From Stealing Cake.

The Wise Use Of Leisure, It Must Be Conceded, Is A Product Of Civilization And Education.

No One Ever Gossips About The Virtues Of Others

The Purpose Of Education Is To Teach A Defense Against Eloquence.

Your Writing Is Never As Good As You Hoped; But Never As Bad As You Feared.

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

Every Great Idea Starts Out As A Blasphemy.

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

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

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.

A Good World Needs Knowledge, Kindliness, And Courage; It Does Not Need A Regretful Hankering After The Past Or A Fettering Of The Free Intelligence By The Words Uttered Long Ago By Ignorant Men.

Every Living Thing Is A Sort Of Imperialist, Seeking To Transform As Much As Possible Of Its Environment Into Itself . . . When We Compare The (present) Human Population Of The Globe With . . . That Of Former Times, We See That "chemical Imperialism" Has Been . . . The Main End To Which Human Intelligence Has Been Devoted.

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.

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.

What Was Exciting In The Victorian Age, Would Leave A Man Of Franker Epoch Quite Unmoved. The More Prudes Restrict The Permissible Degree Of Sexual Appeal, The Less Is Required To Make Such An Appeal Effective.

Freedom In General May Be Defined As The Absence Of Obstacles To The Realization Of Desires.

European Travellers Find The Japanese A Smiling Race.

In A Just World, There Would Be No Possibility Of 'charity'.

To Choose One Sock From Each Of Infinitely Many Pairs Of Socks Requires The Axiom Of Choice, But For Shoes The Axiom Is Not Needed.

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

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.

All The Labor Of All The Ages, All The Devotion, All The Inspiration, All The Noonday Brightness Of Human Genius Are Destined To Extinction. So Now, My Friends, If That Is True, And It Is True, What Is The Point?

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.

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do. [...] The Most Savage Controversies Are Those About Matters As To Which There Is No Good Evidence Either Way. Persecution Is Used In Theology, Not In Arithmetic, Because In Arithmetic There Is Knowledge, But In Theology There Is Only Opinion. So Whenever You Find Yourself Getting Angry About A Difference Of Opinion, Be On Your Guard; You Will Probably Find, On Examination, That Your Belief Is Going Beyond What The Evidence Warrants.

Finding Yourself

A Man Of Seville Is Shaved By The Barber Of Seville If And Only If The Man Does Not Shave Himself. Does The Barber Shave Himself?

America Remained A Land Of Promise For Lovers Of Freedom. Even Byron, At A Moment When He Was Disgusted With Napoleon For Not Committing Suicide, Wrote An Eloquent Stanza In Praise Of Washington.

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?

He Will See Himself And Life And The World As Truly As Our Human Limitations Will Permit; Realizing The Brevity And Minuteness Of Human Life, He Will Realize Also That In Individual Minds Is Concentrated Whatever Of Value The Known Universe Contains. And He Will See That The Man Whose Mind Mirrors The World Becomes In A Sense As Great As The World. In Emancipation From The Fears That Beset The Slave Of Circumstance He Will Experience A Profound Joy, And Through All The Vicissitudes Of His Outward Life He Will Remain In The Depths Of His Being A Happy Man.

Admiration Of The Proletariat, Like That Of Dams, Power Stations, And Aeroplanes, Is Part Of The Ideology Of The Machine Age.

There Is No Difference Between Someone Who Eats Too Little And Sees Heaven And Someone Who Drinks Too Much And Sees Snakes.

What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

The Late F. W. H. Myers Used To Tell How He Asked A Man At A Dinner Table What He Thought Would Happen To Him When He Died. The Man Tried To Ignore The Question, But, On Being Pressed, Replied: "oh Well, I Suppose I Shall Inherit Eternal Bliss, But I Wish You Wouldn't Talk About Such Unpleasant Subjects."

Next To Worry Probably One Of The Most Potent Causes Of Unhappiness Is Envy.

In Mass Cruelty, The Expulsions Of Germans Ordered By The Russians Fall Not Very Far Short Of The Atrocities Perpetrated By The Nazis.

It Seems To Us Unwise To Have Insisted On Teaching Geometry To The Younger Dionysius, Tyrant Of Syracuse, In Order To Make Him A Good King, But From Plato's Point Of View It Was Essential. He Was Sufficiently Pythagorean To Think That Without Mathematics No True Wisdom Is Possible.

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.

When We Have Told How Things Behave When They Are Electrified, And Under What Circumstances They Are Electrified, We Have Told All There Is To Know

If Two Hitherto Rival Football Teams, Under The Influence Of Brotherly Love, Decided To Co-operate In Placing The Football First Beyond One Goal And Then Beyond The Other, No One's Happiness Would Be Increased

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

For Over Two Thousand Years It Has Been The Custom Among Earnest Moralists To Decry Happiness As Something Degraded And Unworthy

Grasshopper Always Wrong In Argument With Chicken.

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

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

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.

Thee Might Observe Incidentally That If The State Paid For Child-bearing It Might And Ought To Require A Medical Certificate That The Parents Were Such As To Give A Reasonable Result Of A Healthy Child -- This Would Afford A Very Good Inducement To Some Sort Of Care For The Race, And Gradually As Public Opinion Became Educated By The Law, It Might React On The Law And Make That More Stringent, Until One Got To Some State Of Things In Which There Would Be A Little Genuine Care For The Race, Instead Of The Present Haphazard Higgledy-piggledy Ways.

Our Great Democracies Still Tend To Think That A Stupid Man Is More Likely To Be Honest Than A Clever Man.

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.

There Lies Before Us, If We Choose, Continual Progress In Happiness, Knowledge And Wisdom. Shall We Instead Choose Death, Because We Cannot Forget Our Quarrels? I Appeal As A Human Being To Human Beings; Remember Your Humanity, And Forget The Rest.

None Of Our Beliefs Are Quite True; All Have At Least A Penumbra Of Vagueness And Error.

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.

I Have Come To Realize That An Early Symptom Of Approaching Mental Illness Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important. If You Consider Your Work Very Important You Should Take A Day Off.

Unhappy Business Men, I Am Convinced, Would Increase Their Happiness More By Walking Six Miles Every Day Than By Any Conceivable Change Of Philosophy.

Order, Unity, And Continuity Are Human Inventions, Just As Truly As Catalogues And Encyclopedias.

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

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.

If You Think Your Belief Is Based Upon Reason, You Will Support It By Argument Rather Than By Persecution, And Will Abandon It If The Argument Goes Against You. But If Your Belief Is Based Upon Faith, You Will Realize That Argument Is Useless, And Will Therefore Resort To Force Either In The Form Of Persecution Or By Stunting Or Distorting The Minds Of The Young In What Is Called 'education.'

When You Want To Teach Children To Think, You Begin By Treating Them Seriously When They Are Little, Giving Them Responsibilities, Talking To Them Candidly, Providing Privacy And Solitude For Them, And Making Them Readers And Thinkers Of Significant Thoughts From The Beginning. That’s If You Want To Teach Them To Think.

I Never Held Negroes To Be Inherently Inferior. The Statement In Marriage And Morals Refers To Environmental Conditioning. I Have Had It Withdrawn From Subsequent Editions Because It Is Clearly Ambiguous.

Man Needs, For His Happiness, Not Only The Enjoyment Of This Or That, But Hope And Enterprise And Change.

War Grows Out Of Ordinary Human Nature.

Love And Knowledge, So Far As They Were Possible, Led Upward Toward The Heavens. But Always Pity Brought Me Back To Earth. Echoes Of Cries Of Pain Reverberate In My Heart. Children In Famine, Victims Tortured By Oppressors, Helpless Old People A Burden To Their Sons, And The Whole World Of Loneliness, Poverty, And Pain Make A Mockery Of What Human Life Should Be. I Long To Alleviate This Evil, But I Cannot, And I Too Suffer.

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.

The Military Superiority Of Europe To Asia Is Not An Eternal Law Of Nature, As We Are Tempted To Think, And Our Superiority In Civilization Is A Mere Delusion.

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

When One Admits That Nothing Is Certain One Must, I Think, Also Admit That Some Things Are Much More Nearly Certain Than Others.

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 Infliction Of Cruelty With A Good Conscience Is A Delight To Moralists - That Is Why They Invented Hell.

I Have Found, For Example, That If I Have To Write Upon Sum Rather Difficult Topic, The Best Plan Is To Think About It With Very Great Intensity-the Greatest Intensity Of Which I Am Capable-for A Few Hours Or Days, And At The End Of That Time Give Orders, So To Speak (to My Subconscious Mind) That The Work Is To Proceed Underground. After Some Months I Return Consciously To The Topic And Find That The Work Has Been Done.

Owing To The Identification Of Religion With Virtue, Together With The Fact That The Most Religious Men Are Not The Most Intelligent, A Religious Education Gives Courage To The Stupid To Resist The Authority Of Educated Men, As Has Happened, For Example, Where The Teaching Of Evolution Has Been Made Illegal. So Far As I Can Remember, There Is Not One Word In The Gospels In Praise Of Intelligence; And In This Respect Ministers Of Religion Follow Gospel Authority More Closely Than In Some Others.

Our Instinctive Emotions Are Those That We Have Inherited From A Much More Dangerous World, And Contain, Therefore, A Larger Portion Of Fear Than They Should.

Dangerous World

Science, In Its Ultimate Ideal, Consists Of A Set Of Propositions Arranged In A Hierarchy, The Lowest Level Of The Hierarchy Being Concerned With Particular Facts, And The Highest With Some General Law, Governing Everything In The Universe. The Various Levels In The Hierarchy Have A Two-fold Logical Connection, Travelling One Up, One Down; The Upward Connection Proceeds By Induction, The Downward By Deduction.

The Axiom Of Choice Is Necessary To Select A Set From An Infinite Number Of Socks, But Not An Infinite Number Of Shoes.

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

If You Wish To Be Happy Yourself, You Must Resign Yourself To Seeing Others Also Happy.

A Sense Of Duty Is Useful In Work But Offensive In Personal Relations. People Wish To Be Liked, Not To Be Endured With Patient Resignation.

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

Change Is One Thing, Progress Is Another.

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.

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.

It Is Amusing To Hear The Modern Christian Telling You How Mild And Rationalistic Christianity Really Is And Ignoring The Fact That All Its Mildness And Rationalism Is Due To The Teaching Of Men Who In Their Own Day Were Persecuted By All Orthodox Christians.

If There Were In The World Today Any Large Number Of People Who Desired Their Own Happiness More Than They Desired The Unhappiness Of Others, We Could Have A Paradise In A Few Years.

The Commonest Objection To Birth Control Is That It Is Against Nature.

A Man's Acts Are Partly Determined By Spontaneous Impulse, Partly By The Conscious And Unconscious Effects Of The Various Groups To Which He Belongs.

Most Human Beings, Though In Varying Degrees, Desire To Control, Not Only Their Own Lives But Also The Lives Of Others

Lives Of Others

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

Philosophy, For Plato, Is A Kind Of Vision, The 'vision Of Truth'...everyone Who Has Done Any Kind Of Creative Work Has Experienced, In A Greater Or Less Degree, The State Of Mind In Which, After Long Labour, Truth Or Beauty Appears, Or Seems To Appear, In A Sudden Glory - It May Only Be About Some Small Matter, Or It May Be About The Universe. I Think That Most Of The Best Creative Work, In Art, In Science, In Literature, And In Philosophy, Has Been A Result Of Just Such A Moment.

Christianity Offers Reasons For Not Fearing Death Or The Universe, And In So Doing It Fails To Teach Adequately The Virtue Of Courage.

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.

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

Fear Is The Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Have Gone Hand-in-hand. It Is Because Fear Is At The Basis Of Those Two Things. In This World We Can Now Begin A Little To Understand Things, And A Little To Master Them By The Help Of Science, Which Has Forced Its Way Step By Step Against The Christian Religion, Against The Churches, And Against The Opposition Of All The Old Precepts.

What Has Human Happiness To Do With Morals? The Object Of Morals Is Not To Make People Happy.

But It Is Just This Characteristic Of Simplicity In The Laws Of Nature Hitherto Discovered Which It Would Be Fallacious To Generalize, For It Is Obvious That Simplicity Has Been A Part Cause Of Their Discovery, And Can, Therefore, Give No Ground For The Supposition That Other Undiscovered Laws Are Equally Simple.

Always Remember That True Happiness Is Not In Getting What You Want, But Wanting What You Already Have. He Who Dies With The Most Toys Is Still Dead. What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

Getting What You Want

One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence Is Credulity, And Credulity Could Be Enormously Diminished By Instructions As To The Prevalent Forms Of Mendacity. Credulity Is A Greater Evil In The Present Day Than It Ever Was Before, Because, Owing To The Growth Of Education, It Is Much Easier Than It Used To Be To Spread Misinformation, And, Owing To Democracy, The Spread Of Misinformation Is More Important Than In Former Times To The Holders Of Power.

Mankind Is Divided Into Two Classes: Those Who, Being Artificial, Praise Nature, And Those Who, Being Natural, Praise Art.

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.

There Are Certain Things That Our Age Needs. It Needs, Above All, Courageous Hope And The Impulse To Creativeness.

The Happy Life Is To An Extraordinary Extent The Same As The Good Life.

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subconsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do.

(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.

In A Balkan Country, Not So Many Years Ago, A Party Which Had Been Beaten By A Narrow Margin In A General Election Retrieved Its Fortunes By Shooting A Sufficient Number Of The Representatives Of The Other Side To Give It A Majority. . . . Cromwell And Robespierre . . . Acted Likewise.

In Considering Irregular Appearances, There Are Certain Very Natural Mistakes Which Must Be Avoided.

The Eugenic Society . . . Is Perpetually Bewailing The Fact That Wage-earners Breed Faster Than Middle-class People.

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

The Man Who Is Unhappy Will, As A Rule, Adopt An Unhappy Creed, While The Man Who Is Happy Will Adopt A Happy Creed; Each May Attribute His Happiness Or Unhappiness To His Beliefs, While The Real Causation Is The Other Way Round.

The Opposition Of Instinct And Reason Is Mainly Illusory. Instinct, Intuition, Or Insight Is What First Leads To The Beliefs Which Subsequent Reason Confirms Or Confutes; But The Confirmation, Where It Is Possible, Consists, In The Last Analysis, Of Agreement With Other Beliefs No Less Instinctive. Reason Is A Harmonizing, Controlling Force Rather Than A Creative One. Even In The Most Purely Logical Realms, It Is Insight That First Arrives At What Is New.

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

The Most Valuable Things In Life Are Not Measured In Monetary Terms. The Really Important Things Are Not Houses And Lands, Stocks And Bonds, Automobiles And Real State, But Friendships, Trust, Confidence, Empathy, Mercy, Love And Faith.

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