Background Image

...

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.

-Bertrand Russell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

But Courage In Fighting

Bertrand Russell

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Bertrand Russell

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

I Feel Life Is So Small Unless It Has Windows Into Other Worlds.

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

The Point Of Philosophy Is To Start With Something So Simple As Not To Seem Worth Stating, And To End With Something So Paradoxical That No One Will Believe It.

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.

All Definite Knowledge - So I Should Contend - Belongs To Science; All Dogma As To What Surpasses Definite Knowledge Belongs To Theology. But Between Theology And Science There Is A No Man's Land, Exposed To Attack By Both Sides; This No Man's Land Is Philosophy.

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

Neither The Church Nor Modern Public Opinion Condemns Petting, Provided It Stops Short At A Certain Point.

Scientific Method, Although In Its More Refined Forms It May Seem Complicated, Is In Essence Remarkably Simply. It Consists In Observing Such Facts As Will Enable The Observer To Discover General Laws Governing Facts Of The Kind In Question. The Two Stages, First Of Observation, And Second Of Inference To A Law, Are Both Essential, And Each Is Susceptible Of Almost Indefinite Refinement. (1931)

As Soon As We Abandon Our Own Reason, And Are Content To Rely Upon Authority, There Is No End To Our Trouble. . . . No Catholic, For Instance, Takes Seriously The Text Which Says That A Bishop Should Be The Husband Of One Wife.

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.

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.

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

Perhaps The Best Hope For The Future Of Mankind Is That Ways Will Be Found Of Increasing The Scope And Intensity Of Sympathy.

To Discover A System For The Avoidance Of War Is A Vital Need Of Our Civilisation.

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.

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

What Is New In Our Time Is The Increased Power Of The Authorities To Enforce Their Prejudices.

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

My Doctor Said To Me Afterwards, 'when You Were Ill You Behaved Like A True Philosopher. Every Time You Came To Yourself You Made A Joke.' I Never Had A Compliment That Pleased Me More.

Logic Must No More Admit A Unicorn Than Zoology Can.

While The Dogmatist Is Harmful, The Sceptic Is Useless ...; One Is Certain Of Knowing, The Other Of Not Knowing. What Philosophy Should Dissipate Is Certainty, Whether Of Knowledge Or Of Ignorance. Knowledge Is Not So Precise A Concept As Is Commonly Thought. Instead Of Saying 'i Know This', We Ought To Say 'i More Or Less Know Something More Or Less Like This'. ... Knowledge In Practical Affairs Has Not The Certainty Or The Precision Of Arithmetic.

The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation.

The Free Intellect Is The Chief Engine Of Human Progress.

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

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

I Have Throughout Been Curious About How Much We Can Be Said To Know And With What Degree Of Certainty Or Doubtfulness.

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

Almost All Education Has A Political Motive.

It's Not What You Have Lost, But What You Have Left That Counts.

With Civilized Men..., It Is, I Think, Chiefly Love Of Excitement Which Makes The Populace Applaud When War Breaks Out; The Emotion Is Exactly The Same As At A Football Match, Although The Results Are Sometimes Somewhat More Serious.

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

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

Lives Of Others

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.

Every Advance In Civilization Has Been Denounced As Unnatural While It Was Recent

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

All The Time That He Can Spare From The Adornment Of His Person, He Devotes To The Neglect Of His Duties.

There Are Two Motives For Reading A Book; One, That You Enjoy It; The Other, That You Can Boast About It.

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.

Americans Need Rest, But Do Not Know It. I Believe This To Be A Large Part Of The Explanation Of The Crime Wave In The United States.

A Logical Theory May Be Tested By Its Capacity For Dealing With Puzzles, And It Is A Wholesome Plan, In Thinking About Logic, To Stock The Mind With As Many Puzzles As Possible, Since These Serve Much The Same Purpose As Is Served By Experiments In Physical Science.

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

European Travellers Find The Japanese A Smiling Race.

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 Man Without A Bias Cannot Write Interesting History - If Indeed Such A Man Exists.

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

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.

The Above Proposition Is Occasionally Useful.

No Man Can Be A Good Teacher Unless He Has Feelings Of Warm Affection Toward His Pupils And A Genuine Desire To Impart To Them What He Believes To Be Of Value.

I Feel As If One Would Only Discover On One's Death Bed What One Ought To Have Lived For

Almost All Education Has A Political Motive: It Aims At Strengthening Some Group, National Or Religious Or Even Social, In The Competition With Other Groups. It Is This Motive, In The Main, Which Determines The Subjects Taught, The Knowledge Offered And The Knowledge Withheld, And Also Decides What Mental Habits The Pupils Are Expected To Acquire. Hardly Anything Is Done To Foster The Inward Growth Of Mind And Spirit; In Fact, Those Who Have Had The Most Education Are Very Often Atrophied In Their Mental And Spiritual Life.

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.

Conventional People Are Roused To Fury By Departure From Convention, Largely Because They Regard Such Departure As A Criticism Of Themselves.

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

...the Nonexistence Of God Makes More Difference To Some Of Us Than To Others. To Me, It Means That There Is No Absolute Morality, That Moralities Are Sets Of Social Conventions Devised By Humans To Satisfy Their Needs.

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

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.

Philosophy, If It Cannot Answer So Many Questions As We Could Wish, Has At Least The Power Of Asking Questions Which Increase The Interest Of The World, And Show The Strangeness And Wonder Lying Just Below The Surface Even In The Commonest Things Of Daily Life.

Asking Questions

The Stoic Assures Us That What Is Happening Now Will Happen Over And Over Again. [if So, Providende Would] Ultimately Grow Weary Through Despair.

There Is An Element Of The Busybody In Our Conception Of Virtue: Unless A Man Makes Himself A Nuisance To A Great Many People, We Do Not Think He Can Be An Exceptionally Good Man.

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

Modern Technique Has Made It Possible For Leisure, Within Limits, To Be Not The Prerogative Of Small Privileged Classes, But A Right Evenly Distributed Throughout The Community. The Morality Of Work Is The Morality Of Slaves, And The Modern World Has No Need Of Slavery.

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

Love And Knowledge Led Upwards To The Heavens.

The Tragedy Of The People Of Palestine Is That Their Country Was “given” By A Foreign Power To Another People For The Creation Of A New State. The Result Was That Many Hundreds Of Thousands Of Innocent People Were Made Permanently Homeless. With Every New Conflict Their Numbers Increased. How Much Longer Is The World Willing To Endure This Spectacle Of Wanton Cruelty?

The "social Contract," In The Only Sense In Which It Is Not Completely Mythical, Is A Contract Among Conquerors, Which Loses Its Raison D'être If They Are Deprived Of The Benefits Of Conquest.

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

Envy Is The Basis Of Democracy.

To Acquire Immunity To Eloquence Is Of The Utmost Importance To The Citizens Of A Democracy.

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

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.

I Want To Say, In All Seriousness, That A Great Deal Of Harm Is Being Done In The Modern World By Belief In The Virtuousness Of Work, And That The Road To Happiness And Prosperity Lies In The Organised Diminution Of Work.

I Think The Subject Which Will Be Of Most Importance Politically Is Mass Psychology... Its Importance Has Been Enormously Increased By The Growth Of Modern Methods Of Propaganda. Although This Science Will Be Diligently Studied, It Will Be Rigidly Confined To The Governing Class. The Populace Will Not Be Allowed To Know How Its Convictions Are Generated.

World Government

I Cannot Escape From The Conclusion That The Great Ages Of Progress Have Depended Upon A Small Number Of Individuals Of Transcendent Ability.

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.

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.

From The Height Of Their Disillusionment They Look Down Upon Those Whom They Despise As Simple Souls. For My Part I Have No Sympathy With This Outlook. All Disenchantment Is To Me A Malady, Which, It Is True, Certain Circumstances May Render Inevitable, But Which None The Less, When It Occurs, Is To Be Cured As Soon As Possible, Not To Be Regarded As A Higher Form Of Wisdom.

Broadly Speaking, Protestants Like To Be Good And Have Invented Theology In Order To Keep Themselves So, Whereas Catholics Like To Be Bad And Have Invented Theology In Order To Keep Their Neighbors Good. Hence, The Social Character Of Catholicism And The Individual Character Of Protestantism.

If I Were Granted Omnipotence, And Millions Of Years To Experiment In, I Should Not Think Man Much To Boast Of As The Final Result Of All My Efforts.

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

One Is Always A Little Afraid Of Love, But Above All, One Is Afraid Of Pain Or Causing Pain.

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

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

Mankind Has Become So Much One Family That We Cannot Insure Our Own Prosperity Except By Insuring That Of Everyone Else.

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.

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

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

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.

There Is No Nonsense So Errant That It Cannot Be Made The Creed Of The Vast Majority By Adequate Governmental Action.

Knowledge And Power

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

Psychology Often Becomes The Disease Of Which It Should Be The Cure.

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

Everything Is Vague To A Degree You Do Not Realize Till You Have Tried To Make It Precise.

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

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.

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

Human Nature Being What It Is, People Will Insist Upon Getting Some Pleasure Out Of Life.

Bolshevism Is To Be Reckoned With Mohammedanism Rather Than With Christianity And Buddhism. Christianity And Buddhism Are Primarily Personal Religions, With Mystical Doctrines And A Love Of Contemplation. Mohammedanism And Bolshevism Are Practical, Social, Unspiritual, Concerned To Win The Empire Of The World.

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

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?

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

If We Were All Given By Magic The Power To Read Each Other's Thoughts, I Suppose The First Effect Would Be To Dissolve All Friendships.

Friendship Love

One Must Expect A War Between U.s.a. And U.s.s.r. Which Will Begin With The Total Destruction Of London. I Think The War Will Last 30 Years, And Leave A World Without Civilised People, From Which Everything Will Have To Build Afresh - A Process Taking (say) 500 Years.

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.

Patience And Boredom Are Closely Related. Boredom, A Certain Kind Of Boredom, Is Really Impatience. You Don't Like The Way Things Are, They Aren't Interesting Enough For You, So You Deccide- And Boredom Is A Decision-that You Are Bored.

A World Full Of Happiness Is Not Beyond Human Power To Create; The Obstacles Imposed By Inanimate Nature Are Not Insuperable. The Real Obstacles Lie In The Heart Of Man, And The Cure For These Is A Firm Hope, Informed And Fortified By Thought.

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

Philosophy Seems To Me On The Whole A Rather Hopeless Business.

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

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

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.

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

The Use Of Self Control Is Like The Use Of Brakes On Train. It Is Useful When You Find Yourself In Wrong Direction But Merely Harmful When The Direction Is Right

In Astronomy, The Law Of Gravitation Is Plainly Better Worth Knowing Than The Position Of A Particular Planet On A Particular Night, Or Even On Every Night Throughout A Year. There Are In The Law A Splendour And Simplicity And Sense Of Mastery Which Illuminate A Mass Of Otherwise Uninteresting Details. But In History The Matter Is Far Otherwise. Historical Facts, Many Of Them, Have An Intrinsic Value, A Profound Interest On Their Own Account, Which Makes Them Worthy Of Study, Quite Apart From Any Possibility Of Linking Them Together By Means Of Causal Laws.

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

The Morality Of Work Is The Morality Of Slaves, And The Modern World Has No Need Of Slavery.

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

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

[man] ... His Origin, His Growth, His Hopes And Fears, His Loves And His Beliefs Are But The Outcome Of Accidental Collocations Of Atoms; That No Fire, No Heroism, No Intensity Of Thought And Feeling Can Preserve An Individual Life Beyond The Grave; That All The Labour Of The Ages, All The Devotion, All The Inspiration, All The Noonday Brightness Of Human Genius Are Destined To Extinction In The Vast Death Of The Solar System, And That The Whole Temple Of Man's Achievement Must Inevitably Be Buried Beneath The Debris Of A Universe In Ruins.

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

Conquer The World

The First Step In A Fascist Movement Is The Combination Under An Energetic Leader Of A Number Of Men Who Possess More Than The Average Share Of Leisure, Brutality, And Stupidity. The Next Step Is To Fascinate Fools And Muzzle The Intelligent, By Emotional Excitement On The One Hand And Terrorism On The Other.

Sir Arthur Eddington Deduces Religion From The Fact That Atoms Do Not Obey The Laws Of Mathematics. Sir James Jeans Deduces It From The Fact That They Do.

If We Were All Given By Magic The Power To Read Each Other’s Thoughts, I Suppose The First Effect Would Be Almost All Friendships Would Be Dissolved; The Second Effect, However, Might Be Excellent, For A World Without Any Friends Would Be Felt To Be Intolerable, And We Should Learn To Like Each Other Without Needing A Veil Of Illusion To Conceal From Ourselves That We Did Not Think Each Other Absolutely Perfect.

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

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.

Truth Is For The Gods; From Our Human Point Of View, It Is An Ideal, Towards Which We Can Approximate, But Which We Cannot Hope To Reach.

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.

Christ Said "thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself" And When Asked "who Is Thy Neighbour? Went On To The Parable Of The Good Samaritan. If You Wish To Understand This Parable As It Was Understood By His Hearers, You Should Substitute "germans And Japanese" For Samaritan. I Fear My Modern Day Christians Would Resent Such A Substitution, Because It Would Compel Them To Realize How Far They Have Departed From The Teachings Of The Founder Of Their Religion.

I Think Modern Educational Theorists Are Inclined To Attach Too Much Importance To The Negative Virtue Of Not Interfering With Children, And Too Little To The Positive Merit Of Enjoying Their Company.

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

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

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 Doctrine (of) Maintaining That The Language Of Daily Life, With Words Used In Their Ordinary Meanings, Suffices For Philosophy . . . I Find Myself Totally Unable To Accept . . . . Because It Makes Almost Inevitable The Perpetuation Amongst Philosophers Of The Muddle-headedness They Have Taken Over From Common Sense.

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. Modern Methods Of Production Have Given Us The Possibility Of Ease And Security For All; We Have Chosen, Instead, To Have Overwork For Some And Starvation For The Others. Hitherto We Have Continued To Be As Energetic As We Were Before There Were Machines; In This We Have Been Foolish, But There Is No Reason To Go On Being Foolish For Ever.

Scientific Societies Are As Yet In Their Infancy. It Is To Be Expected That Advances In Physiology And Psychology Will Give Governments Much More Control Over Individual Mentality Than They Now Have Even In Totalitarian Countries. Fitche Laid It Down That Education Should Aim At Destroying Free Will, So That, After Pupils Have Left School, They Shall Be Incapable, Throughout The Rest Of Their Lives, Of Thinking Or Acting Otherwise Than As Their Schoolmasters Would Have Wished.

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

We Are Condemned To Kill Time, Thus We Die Bit By Bit. - Octavio Paz The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

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

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 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.

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

Every Great Idea Starts Out As A Blasphemy.

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.

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

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

To Think I Have Spent My Life On Absolute Muck.

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.

The Use Of Force Stands In Need Of Control By A Public Neutral Authority, In The Interests Of Liberty No Less Than Of Justice. Within A Nation, This Public Authority Will Naturally Be The State; In Relations Between Nations, If The Present Anarchy Is To Cease, It Will Have To Be Some International Parliament.

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.

Marriage Is For Women The Commonest Mode Of Livelihood, And The Total Amount Of Undesired Sex Endured By Women Is Probably Greater In Marriage Than In Prostitution.

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

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.

It Appeared To Me Obvious That The Happiness Of Mankind Should Be The Aim Of All Action, And I Discovered To My Surprise That There Were Those Who Thought Otherwise.

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.

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.

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

To Fear Love Is To Fear Life, And Those Who Fear Life Are Already Three Parts Dead.

With Equal Passion I Have Sought Knowledge. I Have Wished To Understand The Hearts Of Men. I Have Wished To Know Why The Stars Shine. And I Have Tried To Apprehend The Pythagorean Power By Which Number Holds Sway About The Flux. A Little Of This, But Not Much, I Have Achieved.

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.

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

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.

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

That Which Exists Through Itself Is Called The Eternal. The Eternal Has Neither Name Nor Shape. It Is The One Essence, The One Primal Spirit. Essence And Life Cannot Be Seen. They Are Contained In The Light Of Heaven. The Light Of Heaven Cannot Be Seen. It Is Contained In The Two Eyes.

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 Habit Of Basing Convictions Upon Evidence, And Of Giving To Them Only That Degree Or Certainty Which The Evidence Warrants, Would, If It Became General, Cure Most Of The Ills From Which The World Suffers.

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

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.

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.

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

I Must Confess That I Am Deeply Troubled. I Fear That Human Beings Are Intent Upon Acting Out A Vast Deathwish And That It Lies With Us Now To Make Every Effort To Promote Resistance To The Insanity And Brutality Of Policies Which Encompass The Extermination Of Hundreds Of Millions Of Human Beings.

Civilized People Cannot Fully Satisfy Their Sexual Instinct Without Love.

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.

No People Anywhere In The World Would Accept Being Expelled En Masse From Their Own Country; How Can Anyone Require The People Of Palestine To Accept A Punishment Which Nobody Else Would Tolerate?

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.

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

To Avoid The Various Foolish Opinions To Which Mankind Are Prone, No Superhuman Genius Is Required. A Few Simple Rules Will Keep You, Not From All Error, But From Silly Error.

Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habit.

You Find As You Look Around The World That Every Single Bit Of Progress In Humane Feeling, Every Improvement In The Criminal Law, Every Step Toward The Diminution Of War, Every Step Toward Better Treatment Of The Colored Races, Or Every Mitigation Of Slavery, Every Moral Progress That There Has Been In The World, Has Been Consistently Opposed By The Organized Churches Of The World. I Say Quite Deliberately That The Christian Religion, As Organized In Its Churches, Has Been And Still Is The Principle Enemy Of Moral Progress In The World.

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.

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.

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.

In The Part Of This Universe That We Know There Is Great Injustice, And Often The Good Suffer, And Often The Wicked Prosper, And One Hardly Knows Which Of Those Is The More Annoying.

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

In The Ordinary Business Of Life Punctuality Is . . . Necessary.

The Universe May Have A Purpose, But Nothing We Know Suggests That, If So, This Purpose Has Any Similarity To Ours.

The Megalomaniac Differs From The Narcissist By The Fact That He Wishes To Be Powerful Rather Than Charming, And Seeks To Be Feared Rather Than Loved. To This Type Belong Many Lunatics And Most Of The Great Men Of History.

Opinions Which Justify Cruelty Are Inspired By Cruel Impulses.

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

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.

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

The Theoretical Understanding Of The World, Which Is The Aim Of Philosophy, Is Not A Matter Of Great Practical Importance To Animals, Or To Savages, Or Even To Most Civilised Men.

It Seems To Me Now That Mathematics Is Capable Of An Artistic Excellence As Great As That Of Any Music, Perhaps Greater; Not Because The Pleasure It Gives (although Very Pure) Is Comparable, Either In Intensity Or In The Number Of People Who Feel It, To That Of Music, But Because It Gives In Absolute Perfection That Combination, Characteristic Of Great Art, Of Godlike Freedom, With The Sense Of Inevitable Destiny; Because, In Fact, It Constructs An Ideal World Where Everything Is Perfect And Yet True.

Fervent Religious Believers Sacrifice Pleasures Of The Body, But Instead Enjoy Pleasures Of The Mind, Including The Joy Of Knowing That Those Men Who Didn't Follow Their Religion Would Be Tortured For Eternity.

Nine-tenths Of The Appeal Of Pornography Is Due To The Indecent Feelings Concerning Sex Which Moralists Inculcate In The Young; The Other Tenth Is Physiological, And Will Occur In One Way Or Another Whatever The State Of The Law May Be.

One Of The Troubles About Vanity Is That It Grows With What It Feeds On. The More You Are Talked About, The More You Will Wish To Be Talked About.

Beware The Man Of The Single Book

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.

The Great Majority Of Men And Women, In Ordinary Times, Pass Through Life Without Ever Contemplating Or Criticising, As A Whole, Either Their Own Conditions Or Those Of The World At Large.

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

I Should Like To Believe My People's Religion, Which Was Just What I Could Wish, But Alas, It Is Impossible. I Have Really No Religion, For My God, Being A Spirit Shown Merely By Reason To Exist, His Properties Utterly Unknown, Is No Help To My Life. I Have Nor The Parson's Comfortable Doctrine That Every Good Action Has Its Reward, And Every Sin Is Forgiven. My Whole Religion Is This: Do Every Duty, And Expect No Reward For It, Either Here Or Hereafter.

Trending Author

Alexander McQueen

Category