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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.

-Bertrand Russell

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But As The Work

Bertrand Russell

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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.

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The Coward Wretch Whose Hand And Heart Can Bear To Torture Aught Below, Is Ever First To Quail And Start From The Slightest Pain Or Equal Foe.

People Are Said To Believe In God, Or To Disbelieve In Adam And Eve. But In Such Cases What Is Believed Or Disbelieved Is That There Is An Entity Answering A Certain Description. This, Which Can Be Believed Or Disbelieved Is Quite Different From The Actual Entity (if Any) Which Does Answer The Description. Thus The Matter Of Belief Is, In All Cases, Different In Kind From The Matter Of Sensation Or Presentation, And Error Is In No Way Analogous To Hallucination. A Hallucination Is A Fact, Not An Error; What Is Erroneous Is A Judgment Based Upon It.

I Can't Tell Whether I Am Living In A Dream Or A Nightmare.

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.

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.

In View Of The Fact That In Any Future World War Nuclear Weapons Will Certainly Be Employed, And That Such Weapons Threaten The Continued Existence Of Mankind, We Urge The Governments Of The World To Realize, And To Acknowledge Publicly, That Their Purpose Cannot Be Furthered By A World War, And We Urge Them, Consequently, To Find Peaceful Means For The Settlement Of All Matters Of Dispute Between Them.

More And More People Are Becoming Unable To Accept Traditional [religious] Beliefs. If They Think That, Apart From These Beliefs, There Is No Reason For Kindly Behaviour, The Results May Be Needlessly Unfortunate. That Is Why It Is Important To Show That No Supernatural Reasons Are Needed To Make [people] Kind And To Prove That Only Through Kindness Can The Human Race Achieve Happiness.

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

Among Human Beings, The Subjection Of Women Is Much More Complete At A Certain Level Of Civilization Than It Is Among Savages. And The Subjection Is Always Reinforced By Morality.

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.

Philosophy Bakes No Bread

I Think Periods Of Browsing During Which No Occupation Is Imposed From Without Are Important In Youth Because They Give Time For The Formation Of These Apparently Fugitive But Really Vital Impressions.

Skilled Work, Of No Matter What Kind, Is Only Done Well By Those Who Take A Certain Pleasure In It, Quite Apart From Its Utility, Either To Themselves In Earning A Living, Or To The World Through Its Outcome.

Science, By Itself, Cannot Supply Us With An Ethic. It Can Show Us How To Achieve A Given End, And It May Show Us That Some Ends Cannot Be Achieved. But Among Ends That Can Be Achieved Our Choice Must Be Decided By Other Than Purely Scientific Considerations. If A Man Were To Say, "i Hate The Human Race, And I Think It Would Be A Good Thing If It Were Exterminated," We Could Say, "well, My Dear Sir, Let Us Begin The Process With You." But This Is Hardly Argument, And No Amount Of Science Could Prove Such A Man Mistaken.

One Should As A Rule Respect Public Opinion In So Far As Is Necessary To Avoid Starvation And To Keep Out Of Prison, But Anything That Goes Beyond This Is Voluntary Submission To An Unnecessary Tyranny.

In Obedience To The Feeling Of Reality, We Shall Insist That, In The Analysis Of Propositions, Nothing "unreal" Is To Be Admitted. But, After All, If There Is Nothing Unreal, How, It May Be Asked, Could We Admit Anything Unreal? The Reply Is That, In Dealing With Propositions, We Are Dealing In The First Instance With Symbols, And If We Attribute Significance To Groups Of Symbols Which Have No Significance, We Shall Fall Into The Error Of Admitting Unrealities, In The Only Sense In Which This Is Possible, Namely, As Objects Described.

It Is False To Suggest That Men Must Turn Away From His Desires In The Interest Of A Higher Duty. Men Only Responds To Duty If He Desires To Do So. To Understand Men, You Must Understand Their Desires And The Relative Strength Of Those Desires.

Children, After Being Limbs Of Satan In Traditional Theology And Mystically Illuminated Angels In The Minds Of Educational Reformers, Have Reverted To Being Little Devils; Not Theological Demons Inspired By The Evil One, But Scientific Freudian Abominations Inspired By The Unconscious.

The Church No Longer Contends That Knowledge Is In Itself Sinful, Though It Did So In Its Palmy Days; But The Acquisition Of Knowledge, Even Though Not Sinful, Is Dangerous, Since It May Lead To Pride Of Intellect, And Hence To A Questioning Of The Christian Dogma.

Love Can Only Flourish As Long As It Is Free And Spontaneous; It Tends To Be Killed By The Thought That It Is A Duty. To Say That It Is Your Duty To Love So-and-so Is The Surest Way To Cause You To Hate Him Or Her.

I Would Never Die For My Beliefs Because I Might Be Wrong.

Power Is Sweet; It Is A Drug, The Desire For Which Increases With A Habit.

The Power Of Thought, The Vast Regions It Can Master.

Power Of Thought

Be Scrupulously Truthful, Even If The Truth Is Inconvenient, For It Is More Inconvenient When You Try To Conceal It.

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

I've Always Thought Respectable People Scoundrels, And I Look Anxiously At My Face Every Morning For Signs Of My Becoming A Scoundrel.

No Man Treats A Motorcar As Foolishly As He Treats Another Human Being. When The Car Will Not Go, He Does Not Attribute Its Annoying Behavior To Sin; He Does Not Say, 'you Are A Wicked Motorcar, And I Shall Not Give You Any More Petrol Until You Go.' He Attempts To Find Out What Is Wrong And To Set It Right.

The Conception Of The Necessary Unit Of All That Is Resolves Itself Into The Poverty Of The Imagination, And A Freer Logic Emancipates Us From The Straitwaistcoated Benevolent Institution, Which Idealism Palms Off As The Totality Of Being.

Very Many People Spend Money In Ways Quite Different From Those That Their Natural Tastes Would Enjoin, Merely Because The Respect Of Their Neighbors Depends Upon Their Possession Of A Good Car And Their Ability To Give Good Dinners. As A Matter Of Fact, Any Man Who Can Obviously Afford A Car But Genuinely Prefers Travels Or A Good Library Will In The End Be Much More Respected Than If He Behaved Exactly Like Everyone Else.

When We Look At A Rock What We Are Seeing Is Not The Rock, But The Effect Of The Rock Upon Us.

The Christian View That All Intercourse Outside Marriage Is Immoral Was, As We See In The Above Passages From St. Paul, Based Upon The View That All Sexual Intercourse, Even Within Marriage, Is Regrettable. A View Of This Sort, Which Goes Against Biological Facts, Can Only Be Regarded By Sane People As A Morbid Aberration. The Fact That It Is Embedded In Christian Ethics Has Made Christianity Throughout Its Whole History A Force Tending Towards Mental Disorders And Unwholesome Views Of Life.

Ants And Savages Put Strangers To Death.

Philosophy Is To Be Studied, Not For The Sake Of Any Definite Answers To Its Questions, Since No Definite Answers Can, As A Rule, Be Known To Be True, But Rather For The Sake Of The Questions Themselves; Because These Questions Enlarge Our Conception Of What Is Possible, Enrich Our Intellectual Imagination And Diminish The Dogmatic Assurance Which Closes The Mind Against Speculation; But Above All Because, Through The Greatness Of The Universe Which Philosophy Contemplates, The Mind Is Also Rendered Great, And Becomes Capable Of That Union With The Universe Which Constitutes Its Highest Good.

No Matter How Eloquently A Dog May Bark, He Cannot Tell You That His Parents Were Poor, But Honest.

The Secret Of Happiness Is This: Let Your Interests Be As Wide As Possible, And Let Your Reactions To The Things And Persons That Interest You Be As Far As Possible Friendly Rather Than Hostile.

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

Procrastination

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.

Almost Everything That Distinguishes The Modern World From Earlier Centuries Is Attributable To Science, Which Achieved Its Most Spectacular Triumphs In The Seventeenth Century.

This Has Been My Life. I Have Found It Worth Living, And Would Gladly Live It Again If The Second Chance Were Offered Me.

Cynicism Such As One Finds Very Frequently Among The Most Highly Educated Young Men And Women Of The West, Results From The Combination Of Comfort And Powerlessness.

If Throughout Your Life You Abstain From Murder, Theft, Fornication, Perjury, Blasphemy, And Disrespect Toward Your Parents, Church, And Your King, You Are Conventionally Held To Deserve Moral Admiration Even If You Have Never Done A Single Kind, Generous Or Useful Action. This Very Inadequate Notion Of Virtue Is An Outcome Of Taboo Morality, And Has Done Untold Harm.

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

The Psychology Of Adultery Has Been Falsified By Conventional Morals, Which Assume, In Monogamous Countries, That Attraction To One Person Cannot Coexist With Affection For Another. Everybody Knows That This Is Untrue.

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

... Mathematical Knowledge ... Is, In Fact, Merely Verbal Knowledge. "3" Means "2+1", And "4" Means "3+1". Hence It Follows (though The Proof Is Long) That "4" Means The Same As "2+2". Thus Mathematical Knowledge Ceases To Be Mysterious.

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.

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 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.

There Is No Reason To Suppose That The World Had A Beginning At All. The Idea That Things Must Have A Beginning Is Really Due To The Poverty Of Our Thoughts.

Berkeley Retains The Merit Of Having Shown That The Existence Of Matter Is Capable Of Being Denied Without Absurdity.

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.

No Nation Was Ever So Virtuous As Each Believes Itself, And None Was Ever So Wicked As Each Believes The Other.

No Great Achievement Is Possible Without Persistent Work.

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

The Philosophies That Have Been Inspired By Scientific Technique Are Power Philosophies, And Tend To Regard Everything Non-human As Mere Raw Material. Ends Are No Longer Considered; Only The Skillfulness Of The Process Is Valued. This Also Is A Form Of Madness. It Is, In Our Day, The Most Dangerous Form, And The One Against Which A Sane Philosophy Should Provide An Antidote

Something Of The Hermit's Temper Is An Essential Element In Many Forms Of Excellence, Since It Enables Men To Resist The Lure Of Popularity, To Pursue Important Work In Spite Of General Indifference Or Hostility, And Arrive At Opinions Which Are Opposed To Prevalent Errors.

If The Church Is Not Now As Bad As The Soviet Government, That Is Due To The Influence Of Those Who Attacked The Church

Envy Is The Basis Of Democracy.

If A Law Were Passed Giving Six Months To Every Writer Of A First Book, Only The Good Ones Would Do It.

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.

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

When The Journey From Means To End Is Not Too Long, The Means Themselves Are Enjoyed If The End Is Ardently Desired.

The Twin Conceptions Of Sin And Vindictive Punishment Seem To Be At The Root Of Much That Is Most Vigorous, Both In Religion And Politics.

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.

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.

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

At First It Seems Obvious, But The More You Think About It The Stranger The Deductions From This Axiom Seem To Become; In The End You Cease To Understand What Is Meant By It.

The Frequency With Which A Man Experiences Lust Depends Upon His Own Physical Condition, Whereas The Occasion Which Rouse Such Feelings In Him Depend Upon The Social Conventions To Which He Is Accustomed

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

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

Lives Of Others

Respectability, Regularity, And Routine - The Whole Cast-iron Discipline Of A Modern Industrial Society - Have Atrophied The Artistic Impulse, And Imprisoned Love So That It Can No Longer Be Generous And Free And Creative, But Must Be Either Stuffy Or Furtive.

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

Law In Origin Was Merely A Codification Of The Power Of Dominant Groups, And Did Not Aim At Anything That To A Modern Man Would Appear To Be Justice

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 Secrets To Happiness Include Enterprise, Exploration Of One's Interests And The Overcoming Of Obstacles.

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.

What Else Is There To Make Life Tolerable? We Stand On The Shore Of An Ocean, Crying To The Night And To Emptiness. Sometimes A Voice Of One Drowning, And In A Moment The Silence Returns. The World Seems To Me Quite Dreadful, The Unhappiness Of Many People Is Very Great, And I Often Wonder How They All Endure It. It Is Usually The Central Thing Around Which Their Lives Are Built, And I Suppose If They Did Not Live Most Of Their Lives In The Things Of The Moment, They Would Not Be Able To Go On.

When I Found Myself Regarded As Respectable, I Began To Wonder What Sins I Had Committed. I Must Be Very Wicked, I Thought. I Began To Engage In The Most Uncomfortable Introspection.

A Religious Creed Differs From A Scientific Theory In Claiming To Embody Eternal And Absolutely Certain Truth, Whereas Science Is Always Tentative, Expecting That Modification In Its Present Theories Will Sooner Or Later Be Found Necessary, And Aware That Its Method Is One Which Is Logically Incapable Of Arriving At A Complete And Final Demonstration.

The Mind Is A Strange Machine Which Can Combine The Materials Offered To It In The Most Astonishing Ways.

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.

Obviousness Is Always The Enemy Of Correctness.

It Is Because Modern Education Is So Seldom Inspired By A Great Hope That It So Seldom Achieves Great Results.

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.

There Are Still Many People In America Who Regard Depressions As Acts Of God. I Think Keynes Proved That The Responsibility For These Occurrences Does Not Rest With Providence.

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.

Upon Hearing Via Littlewood An Exposition On The Theory Of Relativity: To Think I Have Spent My Life On Absolute Muck.

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.

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid.

Collective Fear Stimulates Herd Instinct, And Tends To Produce Ferocity Toward Those Who Are Not Regarded As Members Of The Herd.

There Is No Greater Reason For Children To Honour Parents Than For Parents To Honour Children Except, That While The Children Are Young, The Parents Are Stronger Than Children.

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

Altogether It Will Be Found That A Quiet Life Is Characteristic Of Great Men, And That Their Pleasures Have Not Been Of The Sort That Would Look Exciting To The Outward Eye.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Christ . . . Said That A Man Who Had Looked After A Woman Lustfully Had Sinned As Much As The Man Who Had Seduced Her. How Absurd!

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.

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.

Whatever We Know Without Inference Is Mental.

When You Are Studying Any Matter Or Considering Any Philosophy, Ask Yourself Only: What Are The Facts, And What Is The Truth That The Facts Bear Out. Never Let Yourself Be Diverted By What You Wish To Believe, But Look Only And Surely At What Are The Facts.

It May Seem To Your Conceited To Suppose That You Can Do Anything Important Toward Improving The Lot Of Mankind. But This Is A Fallacy. You Must Believe That You Can Help Bring About A Better World. A Good Society Is Produced Only By Good Individuals, Just As Truly As A Majority In A Presidential Election Is Produced By The Votes Of Single Electors. Everybody Can Do Something Toward Creating In His Own Environment Kindly Feelings Rather Than Anger, Reasonableness Rather Than Hysteria, Happiness Rather Than Misery.

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.

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.

Belief In God And A Future Life Makes It Possible To Go Through Life With Less Of Stoic Courage Than Is Needed By Skeptics.

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.

Science Seems To Be At War With Itself.... Naive Realism Leads To Physics, And Physics, If True, Shows Naive Realism To Be False. Therefore Naive Realism, If True, Is False; Therefore It Is False.

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little. At Least, We Feel Too Little Of Those Creative Emotions From Which A Good Life Springs.

Belief Systems Provide A Programme Which Relieves The Necessity Of Thought.

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

Every Sane And Sensible And Quiet Thing We Do Is Absolutely Ignored By The Press.

To Like Many People Spontaneously And Without Effort Is Perhaps The Greatest Of All Sources Of Personal Happiness.

We Are All Prone To The Malady Of The Introvert Who With The Manifold Spectacle Of The World Spread Out Before Him, Turns Away And Gazes Only Upon The Emptiness Within.

Science Can Teach Us, And I Think Our Hearts Can Teach Us, No Longer To Look Around For Imaginary Supporters, No Longer To Invent Allies In The Sky, But Rather To Look To Our Own Efforts Here Below To Make The World A Fit Place To Live.

True Happiness For Human Beings Is Possible Only To Those Who Develop Their Godlike Potentialities To The Utmost.

No Man Is Liberated From Fear Who Dare Not See His Place In The World As It Is; No Man Can Achieve The Greatness Of Which He Is Capable Until He Has Allowed Himself To See His Own Littleness.

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

Many A Man Will Have The Courage To Die Gallantly, But Will Not Have The Courage To Say, Or Even To Think, That The Cause For Which He Is Asked To Die Is An Unworthy One.

The Institution Of Representative Government To Us Seems An Essential Part Of Democracy, But The Ancients Never Thought Of It. Its Immense Merit Was That It Enabled A Large Constituency To Exert Indirect Power, And Thus Made Possible The Distribution Of Political Responsibility Throughout The Great States Of Modern Times.

A Man Is Rational In Proportion As His Intelligence Informs And Controls His Desires.

Calculating Machines Do Sums Better Than Even The Cleverest People… As Arithmetic Has Grown Easier, It Has Come To Be Less Respected.

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

Worry Is A Form Of Fear.

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

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

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

Everybody Can Do Something Toward Creating In His Own Environment Kindly Feelings Rather Than Anger, Reasonableness Rather Than Hysteria, Happiness Rather Than Misery.

Dogma Demands Authority, Rather Than Intelligent Thought, As The Source Of Opinion; It Requires Persecution Of Heretics And Hostility To Unbelievers; It Asks Of Its Disciples That They Should Inhibit Natural Kindliness In Favor Of Systematic Hatred.

Fear Is The Main Source Of Superstition, And One Of The Main Sources Of Cruelty. To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

Most Men Do Not Feel In Themselves The Competence Required For Leading Their Group To Victory, And Therefore Seek Out A Captain Who Appears To Possess The Courage And Sagacity Necessary For The Achievement Of Supremacy. Even In Religion This Impulse Appears. Nietzsche Accused Christianity Of Inculcating A Slave-morality, But Ultimate Triumph Was Always The Goal. "blessed Are The Meek, For They Shall Inherit The Earth.

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

I Greatly Doubt Whether The Men Who Become Pirate Chiefs Are Those Who Are Filled With Retrospective Terror Of Their Fathers, Or Whether Napoleon , At Austerlitz, Really Felt That He Was Getting Even With Madame Mère. I Know Nothing Of The Mother Of Attila , But I Rather Suspect That She Spoilt The Little Darling, Who Subsequently Found The World Irritating Because It Sometimes Resisted His Whims.

A Stupid Man's Report Of What A Clever Man Says Can Never Be Accurate, Because He Unconsciously Translates What He Hears Into Something He Can Understand.

To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

Those Who Forget Good And Evil And Seek Only To Know The Facts Are More Likely To Achieve Good Than Those Who View The World Through The Distorting Medium Of Their Own Desires.

There Is... In Our Day, A Powerful Antidote To Nonsense, Which Hardly Existed In Earlier Times - I Mean Science. Science Cannot Be Ignored Or Rejected, Because It Is Bound Up With Modern Technique; It Is Essential Alike To Prosperity In Peace And To Victory In War. That Is, Perhaps From An Intellectual Point Of View, The Most Hopeful Feature Of Our Age, And The One Which Makes It Most Likely That We Shall Escape Complete Submersion In Some New Or Old Superstition.

Great God In Boots! – The Ontological Argument Is Sound!

That The World Is In A Bad Shape Is Undeniable, But There Is Not The Faintest Reason In History To Suppose That Christianity Offers A Way Out.

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.

Hegel's Philosophy Is So Odd That One Would Not Have Expected Him To Be Able To Get Sane Men To Accept It, But He Did. He Set It Out With So Much Obscurity That People Thought It Must Be Profound. It Can Quite Easily Be Expounded Lucidly In Words Of One Syllable, But Then Its Absurdity Becomes Obvious.

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

Change Is Scientific; Progress Is Ethical; Change Is Indubitable, Whereas Progress Is A Matter Of Controversy.

A Good Man Will Never Suspect His Friends Of Shady Actions: This Is Part Of His Goodness. A Good Man Will Never Be Suspected By The Public Of Using His Goodness To Screen Villains: This Is Part Of His Utility

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

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

With Subjectivity In Philosophy, Anarchism In Politics Goes Hand In Hand. Already During Luther's Lifetime, Unwelcome And Unacknowledged Disciples Had Developed The Doctrine Of Anabaptism, Which For A Time Dominated The City Of Munster. The Anabaptists Repudiated All Law Since They Held That Good Men Will Be Guided At Every Moment By The Holy Spirit, Who Can Not Be Bound By Formulas. From This Premise They Arrive At Communism And Sexual Promiscuity; They Were Therefore Exterminated After A Heroic Resistance.

Collective Wisdom, Alas, Is No Adequate Substitute For The Intelligence Of Individuals. Individuals Who Opposed Received Opinions Have Been The Source Of All Progress, Both Moral And Intellectual. They Have Been Unpopular, As Was Natural.

When I Say That Children Should Be Told About Sex, I Do Not Mean That They Should Be Told Only The Bare Physiological Facts; They Should Be Told Whatever They Wish To Know. There Should Be No Attempt To Represent Adults As More Virtuous Than They Are, Or Sex As Occurring Only In Marriage. There Is No Excuse For Deceiving Children. And When, As Must Happen In Conventional Families, They Find That Their Parents Have Lied, They Lose Confidence In Them, And Feel Justified In Lying To Them.

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.

People Are Zealous For A Cause When They Are Not Quite Positive That It Is True.

Positive Thinking

Democracy Is The Process By Which People Choose The Man Who'll Get The Blame.

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

For The Learning Of Every Virtue There Is An Appropriate Discipline, And For The Learning Of Suspended Judgment The Best Discipline Is Philosophy.

In Detective Stories . . . I Alternately Identify Myself With The Murderer And The Huntsman-detective, But . . . There Are Those To Which This Vicarious Outlet Is Too Mild.

While Economics Is About How People Make Choice, Sociology Is About How They Don't Have Any Choice To Make.

Many People When They Fall In Love Look For A Little Haven Of Refuge From The World, Where They Can Be Sure Of Being Admired When They Are Not Admirable, And Praised When They Are Not Praiseworthy.

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.

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.

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.

To The Primitive Mind, Everything Is Either Friendly Or Hostile; But Experience Has Shown That Friendliness And Hostility Are Not The Conceptions By Which The World Is To Be Understood.

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.

Morality In Sexual Relations, When It Is Free From Superstition, Consists Essentially In Respect For The Other Person, And Unwillingness To Use That Person Solely As A Means Of Personal Gratification, Without Regard To His Or Her Desires.

Happiness, As Is Evident, Depends Partly Upon External Circumstances And Partly Upon Oneself.

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

Science And Religion

But If Thought Is To Become The Possession Of Many, Not The Privilege Of The Few, We Must Have Done With Fear. It Is Fear That Holds Men Back - Fear Lest Their Cherished Beliefs Should Prove Delusions, Fear Lest The Institutions By Which They Live Should Prove Harmful, Fear Lest They Themselves Should Prove Less Worthy Of Respect Than They Have Supposed Themselves To Be.

For A Good Notation Has A Subtlety And Suggestiveness Which At Times Make It Seem Almost Like A Live Teacher.

We Know Very Little, And Yet It Is Astonishing That We Know So Much, And Still More Astonishing That So Little Knowledge Can Give Us So Much Power.

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 Don't Care For The Applause One Gets By Saying What Others Are Thinking; I Want Actually To Change People's Thoughts. Power Over People's Minds Is The Main Personal Desire Of My Life; And This Sort Of Power Is Not Acquired By Saying Popular Things.

The Skill Of The Politician Consists In Guessing What People Can Be Brought To Think Advantageous To Themselves; The Skill Of The Expert Consists In Calculating What Really Is Advantageous, Provided People Can Be Brought To Think So.

Anything You're Good At Contributes To Happiness.

Boredom Is... A Vital Problem For The Moralist, Since Half The Sins Of Mankind Are Caused By The Fear Of It.

I Believe That When I Die I Shall Rot, And Nothing Of My Ego Will Survive.

Machines Deprive Us Of Two Things Which Are Certainly Important Ingredients Of Human Happiness, Namely, Spontaneity And Variety.

Neither Acquiescence In Skepticism Nor Acquiescence In Dogma Is What Education Should Produce.

The Typical Westerner Wishes To Be The Cause Of As Many Changes As Possible In His Environment; The Typical Chinaman Wishes To Enjoy As Much And As Delicately As Possible.

What Is Matter? Never Mind.

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.

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

Organic Life, We Are Told, Has Developed Gradually From The Protozoon To The Philosopher, And This Development, We Are Assured, Is Indubitably An Advance. Unfortunately It Is The Philosopher, Not The Protozoon, Who Gives Us This Assurance.

Logic Must No More Admit A Unicorn Than Zoology Can.

Our Beliefs Are, However, Often Contrary To Fact.

If The Ordinary Wage-earner Worked Four Hours A Day, There Would Be Enough For Everybody, And No Unemployment — Assuming A Certain Very Moderate Amount Of Sensible Organization. This Idea Shocks The Well-to-do, Because They Are Convinced That The Poor Would Not Know How To Use So Much Leisure.

Conquer The World By Intelligence, And Not Merely By Being Slavishly Subdued By The Terror That Comes From It.

Conquer The World

Inferences Of Science And Common Sense Differ From Those Of Deductive Logic And Mathematics In A Very Important Respect, Namely, When The Premises Are True And The Reasoning Correct, The Conclusion Is Only Probable.

We Love Our Habits More Than Our Income, Often More Than Our Life.

There Is No Excuse For Deceiving Children. And When, As Must Happen In Conventional Families, They Find That Their Parents Have Lied, They Lose Confidence In Them And Feel Justified In Lying To Them.

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

What Hunger Is In Relation To Food, Zest Is In Relation To Life.

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.

One's Work Is Never So Bad As It Appears On Bad Days, Nor So Good As It Appears On Good Days.

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

The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

Politics Is Largely Governed By Sententious Platitudes Which Are Devoid Of Truth

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.

When Two Great Powers Disagree About Anything - It Doesn't Matter What - They Must Find A Way To Settle It Somehow By Arbitration Or By Negotiation, Not By War Or Threat Of War.

Folly Is Perennial And Yet The Human Race Has Survived.

War Doesn't Determine Who's Right, It Determines Who's Left

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.

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