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

-Bertrand Russell

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Civilized Life, If It

Bertrand Russell

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

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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.

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

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.

One Of The Main Causes Of Trouble In The World Is Dogmatic And Fanatical Belief In Some Doctrine For Which There Is No Adequate Evidence

We Ought To Look The World Frankly In The Face.

Philosophy, From The Earliest Times, Has Made Greater Claims, And Achieved Fewer Results, Than Any Other Branch Of Learning.

Punctuality Is A Quality The Need Of Which Is Bound Up With Social Co-operation. It Has Nothing To Do With The Relation Of The Soul To God, Or With Mystic Insight, Or With Any Of The Matters With Which The More Elevated And Spiritual Moralists Are Concerned.

All Human Activity Is Prompted By Desire.

Men Who Allow Their Love Of Power To Give Them A Distorted View Of The World Are To Be Found In Every Asylum: One Man Will Think He Is The Governor Of The Bank Of England, Another Will Think He Is The King, And Yet Another Will Think He Is God. Highly Similar Delusions, If Expressed By Educated Men In Obscure Language, Lead To Professorships Of Philosophy; And If Expressed By Emotional Men In Eloquent Language, Lead To Dictatorships.

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

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

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

Science May Set Limits To Knowledge, But Should Not Set Limits To Imagination.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

Righteous Indignation

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

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

Self Confidence

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

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.

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.

It Is Only Through Imagination That Men Become Aware Of What The World Might Be; Without It, ‘progress’ Would Become Mechanical And Trivial.

I Have Lived In The Pursuit Of A Vision, Both Personal And Social. Personal: To Care For What Is Noble, For What Is Beautiful, For What Is Gentle; To Allow Moments Of Insight To Give Wisdom At More Mundane Times. Social: To See In Imagination The Society That Is To Be Created, Where Individuals Grow Freely, And Where Hate And Greed And Envy Die Because There Is Nothing To Nourish Them. These Things I Believe, And The World, For All Its Horrors, Has Left Me Unshaken.

While I Am As Convinced A Socialist As The Most Ardent Marxian, I Do Not Regard Socialism As A Gospel Of Proletarian Revenge, Nor Even, Primarily, As A Means Of Securing Economic Justice. I Regard It Primarily As An Adjustment To Machine Production Demanded By Considerations Of Common Sense, And Calculated To Increase The Happiness, Not Only Of Proletarians, But Of All Except A Tiny Minority Of The Human Race.

Affection Cannot Be Created; It Can Only Be Liberated.

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.

Men Have Physical Needs, And They Have Emotions. While Physical Needs Are Unsatisfied, They Take First Place; But When They Are Satisfied, Emotions Unconnected With Them Become Important In Deciding Whether A Man Is To Be Happy Or Unhappy.

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.

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

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

The 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.

No One Gossips About Other People's Secret Virtues.

Keeping Secrets

Historically, It Is Quite Doubtful Whether Christ Ever Existed At All, And If He Did We Do Not Know Anything About Him.

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

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

I Remain Convinced That Obstinate Addiction To Ordinary Language In Our Private Thoughts Is One Of The Main Obstacles To Progress In Philosophy.

Dread Of Disaster Makes Everybody Act In The Very Way That Increases The Disaster. Psychologically The Situation Is Analogous To That Of People Trampled To Death When There Is A Panic In A Theatre Caused By A Cry Of `fire!'.

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

...i Am Afraid That Education Is Conceived More In Terms Of Indoctrination By Most School Officials Than In Terms Of Enlightenment. My Own Belief Is That Education Must Be Subversive If It Is To Be Meaningful. By This I Mean That It Must Challenge All The Things We Take For Granted, Examine All Accepted Assumptions, Tamper With Every Sacred Cow, And Instill A Desire To Question And Doubt. Without This The Mere Instruction To Memorise Data Is Empty. The Attempt To Enforce Conventional Mediocrity On The Young Is Criminal.

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.

Machines Are Worshipped Because They Are Beautiful And Valued Because They Confer Power; They Are Hated Because They Are Hideous And Loathed Because They Impose Slavery.

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

Democracies Have

Politics Is Concerned With Herds Rather Than With Individuals, And The Passions Which Are Important In Politics Are, Therefore, Those In Which The Various Members Of A Given Herd Can Feel Alike.

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

To Understand A Name You Must Be Acquainted With The Particular Of Which It Is A Name.

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.

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.

Patriotism Is The Willingness To Kill And Be Killed For Trivial Reasons.

...impregnation Will Be Regarded In An Entirely Different Manner, More In The Light Of A Surgical Operation, So That It Will Be Thought Not Ladylike To Have It Performed In The Natural Manner.

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.

I Believe That The Abolition Of Private Ownership Of Land And Capital Is A Necessary Step Toward Any World In Which The Nations Are To Live At Peace With One Another.

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

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.

More Cranks Take Up Unfashionable Errors Than Unfashionable Truths.

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

Education, Which Was At First Made Universal In Order That All Might Be Able To Read And Write, Has Been Found Capable Of Serving Quite Other Purposes. By Instilling Nonsense It Unifies Populations And Generates Collective Enthusiasm.

Ignore Fact And Reason, Live Entirely In The World Of Your Own Fantastic And Myth-producing Passions; Do This Whole-heartedly And With Conviction, And You Will Become One Of The Prophets Of Your Age.

The Saviors Of The World, Society's Last Hope.

The Reason Is, And By Rights Ought To Be, Slave To The Emotions.

3 Is Prime, 5 Is Prime, 7 Is Prime, 9 Is A Paradox; As Is A Paradox Why The Number 1 Is Not Prime If It Has No Other Divisors Besides Himself.

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

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

The Slave Is Doomed To Worship Time And Fate And Death, Because They Are Greater Than Anything He Finds In Himself, And Because All His Thoughts Are Of Things Which They Devour.

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

The Search For Something Permanent Is One Of The Deepest Of The Instincts Leading Men To Philosophy.

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.

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.

It Would Now Be Technically Possible To Unify The World, Abolish War And Poverty Altogether, If Men Desired Their Own Happiness More Than The Misery Of Their Enemies.

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.

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.

Frege Has The Merit Of ... Finding A Third Assertion By Recognising The World Of Logic Which Is Neither Mental Nor Physical.

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

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.

You Could Take Up The Line That Some Of The Gnostics Took Up - A Line Which I Often Thought Was A Very Plausible One - That As A Matter Of Fact This World That We Know Was Made By The Devil At A Moment When God Was Not Looking. There Is A Good Deal To Be Said For That, And I Am Not Concerned To Refute It.

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.

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.

Never Let Yourself Be Diverted, Either By What You Wish To Believe, Or What You Think Could Have Beneficent Social Effects If It Were Believed; But Look Only And Solely At What Are The Facts.

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

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

I Feel As If One Would Only Discover On One's Death-bed What One Ought To Have Lived For, And Realise Too Late That One's Life Has Been Wasted. Any Passionate And Courageous Life Seems Good In Itself, Yet One Feels That Some Element Of Delusion Is Involved In Giving So Much Passion To Any Humanly Attainable Object. And So Irony Creeps Into The Very Springs Of One's Being.

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

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

I Did Not, However, Commit Suicide, Because I Wished To Know More Of Mathematics.

It's Coexistence Or No Existence.

As Soon As We Abandon Our Own Reason, And Are Content To Rely Upon Authority, There Is No End To Our Troubles.

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

Aristotle, In Spite Of His Reputation, Is Full Of Absurdities. He Says That Children Should Be Conceived In The Winter, When The Wind Is In The North, And That If People Marry Too Young The Children Will Be Female. He Tells Us That The Blood Of Females Is Blacker Than That Of Males; That The Pig Is The Only Animal Liable To Measles; That An Elephant Suffering From Insomnia Should Have Its Shoulders Rubbed With Salt, Olive-oil, And Warm Water; That Women Have Fewer Teeth Than Men, And So On. Nevertheless, He Is Considered By The Great Majority Of Philosophers A Paragon Of Wisdom.

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

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.

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

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.

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

Every Philosophical Problem, When It Is Subjected To The Necessary Analysis And Justification, Is Found Either To Be Not Really Philosophical At All, Or Else To Be, In The Sense In Which We Are Using The Word, Logical.

Broadly Speaking, We Are In The Middle Of A Race Between Human Skill As A Means And Human Folly As An End.

I Say People Who Feel They Must Have A Faith Or Religion In Order To Face Life Are Showing A Kind Of Cowardice, Which In Any Other Sphere Would Be Considered Contemptible. But When It Is In The Religious Sphere It Is Thought Admirable, And I Cannot Admire Cowardice Whatever Sphere It Is In.

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.

It Must Not Be Supposed That The Subjective Elements Are Any Less 'real' Than The Objective Elements; They Are Only Less Important... Because They Do Not Point To Anything Beyond Ourselves.

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

When We Perceive Any Object Of A Familiar Kind, Much Of What Appears Subjectively To Be Immediately Given Is Really Derived From Past Experience.

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

Freedom Comes Only To Those Who No Longer Ask Of Life That It Shall Yield Them Any Of Those Personal Goods That Are Subject To The Mutations Of Time.

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

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

The Fact That An Opinion Has Been Widely Held Is No Evidence Whatever That It Is Not Utterly Absurd.

Formality Thus The Absence Of All Mention Of Particular Things Or Properties In Logic Or Pure Mathematics Is A Necessary Result Of The Fact That This Study Is, As We Say, "purely Formal".

The Good Life Is One Inspired By Love And Guided By Knowledge.

Understanding Human Nature Must Be The Basis Of Any Real Improvement In Human Life. Science Has Done Wonders In Mastering The Laws Of The Physical World, But Our Own Nature Is Much Less Understood, As Yet, Than The Nature Of Stars And Electrons. When Science Learns To Understand Human Nature, It Will Be Able To Bring A Happiness Into Our Lives Which Machines And The Physical Sciences Have Failed To Create.

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

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.

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.

Pure Mathematics Consists Entirely Of Assertions To The Effect That, If Such And Such A Proposition Is True Of Anything, Then Suchand Such Another Proposition Is True Of That Thing.... Thus Mathematics May Be Defined As The Subject In Which We Never Know What We Are Talking About, Nor Whether What We Are Saying Is True.

When I Was 4 Years Old ... I Dreamt That I'd Been Eaten By A Wolf, And To My Great Surprise I Was In The Wolf's Stomach And Not In Heaven.

It Is Entirely Clear That There Is Only One Way In Which Great Wars Can Be Permanently Prevented, And That Is The Establishment Of An International Government With A Monopoly Of Serious Armed Force.

I Do Not Think That The Real Reason Why People Accept Religion Has Anything To Do With Argumentation. They Accept Religion On Emotional Grounds.

Whoever Wishes To Become A Philosopher Must Learn Not To Be Frightened By Absurdities.

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

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

Procrastination

I Do Not Pretend To Be Able To Prove That There Is No God. I Equally Cannot Prove That Satan Is A Fiction. The Christian God May Exist; So May The Gods Of Olympus, Or Of Ancient Egypt, Or Of Babylon. But No One Of These Hypotheses Is More Probable Than Any Other: They Lie Outside The Region Of Even Probable Knowledge, And Therefore There Is No Reason To Consider Any Of Them.

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.

The Atomic Bomb Embodies The Results Of A Combination Genius And Patience As Remarkable As Any In The History Of Mankind.

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

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

When A Man Acts In Ways That Annoy Us We Wish To Think Him Wicked, And We Refuse To Face The Fact That His Annoying Behavior Is The Result Of Antecedent Causes Which, If You Follow Them Long Enough, Will Take You Beyond The Moment Of His Birth, And Therefore To Events For Which He Cannot Be Held Responsible By Any Stretch Of Imagination... When A Motorcar Fails To Start, We Do Not Attribute Its Annoying Behavior To Sin, We Do Not Say, You Are A Wicked Motorcar, And You Shall Not Have Any More Gasoline Until You Go.

As Men Begin To Grow Civilized, They Cease To Be Satisfied With Mere Taboos.

There Is Darkness Without And When I Die There Will Be Darkness Within. There Is No Splendor, Nor Vastness Anywhere; Only Triviality For A Moment And Then Nothing.

Darkness Within

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.

I Wish To Propose For The Reader's Favourable Consideration A Doctrine Which May, I Fear, Appear Wildly Paradoxical And Subversive. The Doctrine In Question Is This: That It Is Undesirable To Believe A Proposition When There Is No Ground Whatever For Supposing It True.

The Main Thing Needed To Make Men Happy Is Intelligence.

Worry Is A Form Of Fear.

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

If One Man Offers You Democracy And Another Offers You A Bag Of Grain, At What Stage Of Starvation Do You Prefer The Grain To The Vote?

Fools And Fanatics Are Always So Certain Of Themselves.

Thought Provoking

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.

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

Positive Thinking

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

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

Curious Learning Not Only Makes Unpleasant Things Less Unpleasant But Also Makes Pleasant Things More Pleasant.

Of These Austerer Virtues The Love Of Truth Is The Chief, And In Mathematics, More Than Elsewhere, The Love Of Truth May Find Encouragement For Waning Faith. Every Great Study Is Not Only An End In Itself, But Also A Means Of Creating And Sustaining A Lofty Habit Of Mind; And This Purpose Should Be Kept Always In View Throughout The Teaching And Learning Of Mathematics.

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

We Do Not Like To Be Robbed Of An Enemy; We Want Someone To Hate When We Suffer. It Is So Depressing To Think That We Suffer Because We Are Fools; Yet, Taking Mankind In The Mass, That Is The Truth.

I Do Not Believe That Science Per Se Is An Adequate Source Of Happiness, Nor Do I Think That My Own Scientific Outlook Has Contributed Very Greatly To My Own Happiness, Which I Attribute To Defecating Twice A Day With Unfailing Regularity.

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

For My Part, The Thing I Would Wish To Obtain From Money Would Be Leisure With Security. But What The Typical Modern Man Desires To Get With It Is More Money, With A View To Ostentation, Splendour, And The Outshining Of Those Who Have Hitherto Been His Equals.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I Suggest To Young Professors That Their First Work Should Be Written In A Jargon Only To Be Understood By The Erudite Few. With That Behind Them, They Can Ever After Say What They Have To Say In A Language 'understand Of The People.'

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

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

Hell: A Place Where The Police Are German, The Motorists French And The Cooks English.

One Of The Painful Things About Our Time Is That Those Who Feel Certainty Are Stupid, And Those With Any Imagination And Understanding Are Filled With Doubt And Indecision.

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

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 First Dogma Which I Came To Disbelieve Was That Of Free Will. It Seemed To Me That All Notions Of Matter Were Determined By The Laws Of Dynamics And Could Not Therefore Be Influenced By Human Wills.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The More You Complain The Longer God Lets You Live

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In Regard To The Past, Where Contemplation Is Not Obscured By Desire And The Need For Action, We See, More Clearly Than In The Lives About Us, The Value For Good And Evil, Of The Aims Men Have Pursued And The Means They Have Adopted. It Is Good, From Time To Time, To View The Present As Already Past, And To Examine What Elements It Contains That Will Add To The World's Store Of Permanent Possessions, That Will Live And Give Life When We And All Our Generation Have Perished.

The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation ... It Is Common To Wish Well To Oneself, But In Our Technically Unified World, Wishing Well To Oneself Is Sure To Be Futile Unless It Is Combined With Wishing Well To Others.

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

Beware The Man Of The Single Book

Our Great Democracies Still Tend To Think That A Stupid Man Is More Likely To Be Honest Than A Clever Man, And Our Politicians Take Advantage Of This Prejudice By Pretending To Be Even More Stupid Than Nature Has Made Them.

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

When Conscious Activity Is Wholly Concentrated On Some One Definite Purpose, The Ultimate Result, For Most People, Is Lack Of Balance Accompanied By Some Form Of Nervous Disorder.

In All The Creative Work That I Have Done, What Has Come First Is A Problem, A Puzzle Involving Discomfort.

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

The Fundamental Concept In Social Science Is Power, In The Same Sense In Which Energy Is The Fundamental Concept In Physics.

People Seem Good While They Are Oppressed, But They Only Wish To Become Oppressors In Their Turn: Life Is Nothing But A Competition To Be The Criminal Rather Than The Victim.

Heretical Views Arise When The Truth Is Uncertain, And It Is Only When The Truth Is Uncertain That Censorship Is Invoked.

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.

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

Protestants, From The First, Have Been Distinguished From Their Opponents By What They Do Not Believe; To Throw Over One More Dogma Is, Therefore, Merely To Carry The Movement One Stage Further. Moral Fervor Is The Essence Of The Matter.

Choose Your Parents Wisely.

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

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.

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

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

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

Unless A Man Has Been Taught What To Do With Success After Getting It, The Achievement Of It Must Inevitably Leave Him A Prey To Boredom.

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.

When All Experts Agree, You Need To Watch Out.

What Will Be The Good Of The Conquest Of Leisure And Health, If No One Remembers How To Use Them?

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

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!

The Objections To Religion Are Of Two Sorts - Intellectual And Moral. The Intellectual Objection Is That There Is No Reason To Suppose Any Religion True; The Moral Objection Is That Religious Precepts Date From A Time When Men Were More Cruel Than They Are And Therefore Tend To Perpetuate Inhumanities Which The Moral Conscience Of The Age Would Otherwise Outgrow.

Life Is Just One Cup Of Coffee After Another, And Don't Look For Anything Else.

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