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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.

-Bertrand Russell

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Even If The Open

Bertrand Russell

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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

We Are ... Led To A Somewhat Vague Distinction Between What We May Call "hard" Data And "soft" Data. This Distinction Is A Matter Of Degree, And Must Not Be Pressed; But If Not Taken Too Seriously It May Help To Make The Situation Clear. I Mean By "hard" Data Those Which Resist The Solvent Influence Of Critical Reflection, And By "soft" Data Those Which, Under The Operation Of This Process, Become To Our Minds More Or Less Doubtful.

If You Question Any Candid Person Who Is No Longer Young, He Is Very Likely To Tell You That, Having Tasted Life In This World, He Has No Wish To Begin Again As A "new Boy" In Another.

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

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.

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.

So Long As There Is Death There Will Be Sorrow, And So Long As There Is Sorrow It Can Be No Part Of The Duty Of Human Beings To Increase Its Amount, In Spite Of The Fact That A Few Rare Spirits Know How To Transmute It.

There Was A Law In Connecticut - I Believe It Is Still Formally Unrepealed - Making It Illegal For A Man To Kiss His Wife On Sunday.

In America Everybody Is Of The Opinion That He Has No Social Superiors, Since All Men Are Equal, But He Does Not Admit That He Has No Social Inferiors, For, From The Time Of Jefferson Onward, The Doctrine That All Men Are Equal Applies Only Upwards, Not Downwards.

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

Really High-minded People Are Indifferent To Happiness, Especially Other People's.

Passive Acceptance Of The Teacher's Wisdom Is Easy To Most Boys And Girls. It Involves No Effort Of Independent Thought, And Seems Rational Because The Teacher Knows More Than His Pupils; It Is Moreover The Way To Win The Favour Of The Teacher Unless He Is A Very Exceptional Man. Yet The Habit Of Passive Acceptance Is A Disastrous One In Later Life. It Causes Man To Seek And To Accept A Leader, And To Accept As A Leader Whoever Is Established In That Position.

It Is Permissible With Certain Precautions To Speak In Print Of Coitus, But It Is Not Permissible To Employ The Monosyllabic Synonym For This Word.

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

Choose Your Parents Wisely.

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

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.

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

The True Spirit Of Delight...is To Be Found In Mathematics As Surely As In Poetry.

To Fear Love Is To Fear Life.

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

Remember Your Humanity, And Forget The Rest.

It Would Have Been Very Much Better For The World If Britain Had Remained Neutral And The Germans Had Won A Quick Victory. We Should Not Have Had Either The Nazis Or The Communists If That Had Happened.

I Conclude That, While It Is True That Science Cannot Decide Questions Of Value, That Is Because They Cannot Be Intellectually Decided At All, And Lie Outside The Realm Of Truth And Falsehood. Whatever Knowledge Is Attainable, Must Be Attained By Scientific Methods; And What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot Know.

An Individual Human Existence Should Be Like A River

[kant] Was Like Many People: In Intellectual Matters He Was Skeptical, But In Moral Matters He Believed Imjplicitly In The Maximx That He Had Imbibed At His Mother's Knee.

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

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

If A Philosophy Is To Bring Happiness It Should Be Inspired By Kindly Feelings. Marx Pretended That He Wanted The Happiness Of The Proletariat; What He Really Wanted Was The Unhappiness Of The Bourgeois.

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

All Forms Of Fear Produce Fatigue.

Some People Would Rather Die Than Think.

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.

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.

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.

Belief In A Divine Mission Is One Of The Many Forms Of Certainty That Have Afflicted The Human Race.

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.

What We Cannot Think We Cannot Think, Therefore We Also Cannot Say What We Cannot Think.

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

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

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.

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

All Knowledge, We Feel, Must Be Built Up Upon Our Instinctive Beliefs; And If These Are Rejected, Nothing Is Left.

Many A Marriage Hardly Differs From Prostitution, Except Being Harder To Escape From.

There Are Some Simple Maxims Which I Think Might Be Commended To Writers Of Expository Prose. First: Never Use A Long Word If A Short Word Will Do. So, If You Want To Make A Statement With A Great Many Qualifications, Put Some Of The Qualifications In Separate Sentences. Third: Do Not Let The Beginning Of Your Sentence Lead The Reader To An Expectation Which Is Contradicted By The End.

There Is Something Feeble And A Little Contemptible About A Man Who Cannot Face The Perils Of Life Without The Help Of Comfortable Myths.

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

Written Words Differ From Spoken Words In Being Material Structures. A Spoken Word Is A Process In The Physical World, Having An Essential Time-order; A Written Word Is A Series Of Pieces Of Matter, Having An Essential Space-order.

To Be Out Of Harmony With One's Surroundings Is Of Course A Misfortune, But It Is Not Always A Misfortune To Be Avoided At All Costs. Where The Environment Is Stupid Or Prejudiced Or Cruel, It Is A Sign Of Merit To Be Out Of Harmony With It.

No Other Organization Rouses Anything Like The Loyalty Aroused By The National State. And The Chief Activity Of The State Is Preparation For Large-scale Homicide.

How Much Good It Would Do If One Could Exterminate The Human Race.

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.

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

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.

To Realize The Unimportance Of Time Is The Gate To Wisdom.

Well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.

The First Man Who Said "fire Burns" Was Employing Scientific Method, At Any Rate If He Had Allowed Himself To Be Burnt Several Times. This Man Had Already Passed Through The Two Stages Of Observation And Generalization. He Had Not, However, What Scientific Technique Demands - A Careful Choice Of Significant Facts On The One Hand, And, On The Other Hand, Various Means Of Arriving At Laws Otherwise Than My Mere Generalization.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot Know.

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

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

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

Be Isolated, Be Ignored, Be Attacked, Be In Doubt, Be Frightened, But Do Not Be Silenced.

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.

I Am As Firmly Convinced That Religions Do Harm As I Am That They Are Untrue.

Civilized People Cannot Fully Satisfy Their Sexual Instinct Without Love.

The Scientific Attitude Of Mind Involves A Sweeping Away Of All Other Desires In The Interest Of The Desire To Know.

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

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

In Our Complex World, There Cannot Be Fruitful Initiative Without Government, But Unfortunately There Can Be Government Without Initiative.

I Know A Parson Who Frightened His Congregation Terribly By Telling Them The Second Coming Was Very Imminent Indeed, But They Were Much Consoled When They Found He Was Planting Trees In His Garden.

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.

Vanity Is A Motive Of Immense Potency.

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

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

The Question Of "unreality"is A Very Important One. Misled By Grammar, The Great Majority Of Those Logicians Who Have Dealt With This Question Have Dealt With It On Mistaken Lines. They Have Regarded Grammatical Form As A Surer Guide In Analysis Than, In Fact, It Is. And They Have Not Known What Differences In Grammatical Form Are Important.

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.

You Are A Wicked Motorcar, And I Shall Not Give You Any More Petrol Until You Go.

Love And Knowledge Led Upwards To The Heavens.

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

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

When White Men First Effect Contact With Some Unspoilt Race Of Savages, They Offer Them All Kinds Of Benefits, From The Light Of The Gospel To Pumpkin Pie. These, However, Much As We May Regret It, Most Savages Receive With Indifference. What They Really Value Among The Gifts That We Bring To Them Is Intoxicating Liquor Which Enables Them, For The First Time In Their Lives, To Have The Illusion For A Few Brief Moments That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead.

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

When It Was First Proposed To Establish Laboratories At Cambridge, Todhunter, The Mathematician, Objected That It Was Unnecessary For Students To See Experiments Performed, Since The Results Could Be Vouched For By Their Teachers, All Of Them Of The Highest Character, And Many Of Them Clergymen Of The Church Of England.

Whenever You Find Yourself Getting Angry About A Difference Of Opinion, Be On Your Guard; You Will Probably Find, On Examination, That Your Belief Is Going Beyond What The Evidence Warrants.

Finding Yourself

Those Who Have Never Known The Deep Intimacy And The Intense Companionship Of Happy Mutual Love Have Missed The Best Thing That Life Has To Give.

Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habit. Thought Is Great And Swift And Free.

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

The Discipline In Your Life Should Be One Determined By Your Own Desires And Your Own Needs, Not Put Upon You By Society Or Authority.

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

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

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

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

Change Is One Thing, Progress Is Another.

Why Is Propaganda So Much More Successful When It Stirs Up Hatred Than When It Tries To Stir Up Friendly Feeling?

Do Not Feel Certain Of Anything.

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

The Legacy Of Greece To Western Philosophy Is Western Philosophy.

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

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.

Worry Is A Form Of Fear, And All Forms Of Fear Produce Fatigue. A Man Who Has Learned Not To Feel Fear Will Find The Fatigue Of Daily Life Enormously Diminished.

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

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

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

The 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.

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.

I Suppose The Advocates Of Unreason Think That There Is A Better Chance Of Profitably Deceiving The Populace If They Keep It In A State Of Effervescence.

I Am Firm; You Are Obstinate; He Is A Pig-headed Fool.

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

It Is No Credit To The Orthodox That They Do Not Now Believe All The Absurdities That Were Believed 150 Years Ago. The Gradual Emasculation Of The Christian Doctrine Has Been Effected In Spite Of The Most Vigorous Resistance, And Solely As The Result Of The Onslaughts Of Freethinkers.

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

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

The Observer, When He Seems To Himself To Be Observing A Stone, Is Really, If Physics Is To Be Believed, Observing The Effects Of The Stone Upon Himself.

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

Man Is The Product Of Causes Which Had No Prevision Of The End They Were Achieving; His Origin, His Growth, His Hopes And Fears, His Loves And Beliefs, Are But The Outcome Of Accidental Collocations Of Atoms; No Fire, No Heroism, No Intensity Of Though And Feeling, Can Preserve An Individual Life Beyond The Grave.

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.

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

Divine Revelation

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.

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.

Prison Is A Severe And Terrible Punishment; But For Me, Thanks To Arthur Balfour, This Was Not So. I Was Much Cheered On My Arrival By The Warder At The Gate, Who Had To Take Particulars About Me. He Asked My Religion, And I Replied 'agnostic.' He Asked How To Spell It, And Remarked With A Sigh: 'well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.' This Remark Kept Me Cheerful For About A Week.

Unrestricted Nationalism Is, In The Long Run, Incompatible With World Peace.

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

I Believe That Communism Is Necessary To The World, And I Believe That The Heroism Of Russia Has Fired Men's Hopes In A Way Which Was Essential To The Realization Of Communism In The Future. Regarded As A Splendid Attempt, Without Which Ultimate Success Would Have Been Very Improbable, Bolshevism Deserves The Gratitude And Admiration Of All The Progressive Part Of Mankind.

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

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

Science And Religion

One Of The Most Interesting And Harmful Delusions To Which Men And Nations Can Be Subjected Is That Of Imagining Themselves Special Instruments Of The Divine Will.

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.

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

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.

My Own View On Religion Is That Of Lucretius. I Regard It As A Disease Born Of Fear And As A Source Of Untold Misery To The Human Race. I Cannot, However, Deny That It Has Made Some Contributions To Civilisation. It Helped In Early Days To Fix The Calendar, And It Caused Egyptian Priests To Chronicle Eclipses With Such Care That In Time They Became Able To Predict Them. These Two Services I Am Prepared To Acknowledge, But I Do Not Know Of Any Others.

One Of The Most Powerful Of All Our Passions Is The Desire To Be Admired And Respected.

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

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.

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.

The Best Authorities Are Unanimous In Saying That A War With H-bombs Might Possibly Put An End To The Human Race. It Is Feared That If Many H-bombs Are Used There Will Be Universal Death, Sudden Only For A Minority, But For The Majority A Slow Torture Of Disease And Disintegration.

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.

In Attempting To Understand The Elements Out Of Which Mental Phenomena Are Compounded, It Is Of The Greatest Importance To Remember That From The Protozoa To Man There Is Nowhere A Very Wide Gap Either In Structure Or In Behaviour. From This Fact It Is A Highly Probable Inference That There Is Also Nowhere A Very Wide Mental Gap.

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

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.

Philosophy, Though Unable To Tell Us With Certainty What Is The True Answer To The Doubts Which It Raises, Is Able To Suggest Many Possibilities Which Enlarge Our Thoughts And Free Them From The Tyranny Of Custom.

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

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

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

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

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.

Mathematics Rightly Viewed Possesses Not Only Truth But Supreme Beauty.

Western Philosophy

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

This Illustrates An Important Truth, Namely, That The Worse Your Logic, The More Interesting The Consequences To Which It Gives Rise.

The Fundamental Defect Of Christian Ethics Consists In The Fact That It Labels Certain Classes Of Acts 'sins' And Others 'virtue' On Grounds That Have Nothing To Do With Their Social Consequences.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The Whiter My Hair Becomes, The More Ready People Are To Believe What I Say.

It Will Be Said That The Joy Of Mental Adventure Must Be Rare, That There Are Few Who Can Appreciate It, And That Ordinary Education Can Take No Account Of So Aristocratic A Good. I Do Not Believe This. The Joy Of Mental Adventure Is Far Commoner In The Young Than In Grown Men And Women. ...it Is Rare In Later Life Because Everything Is Done To Kill It During Education.

Obviousness Is Always The Enemy Of Correctness.

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

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

To A Modern Mind, It Is Difficult To Feel Enthusiastic About A Virtuous Life If Nothing Is Going To Be Achieved By It.

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

A Proverb Is One Man's Wit And All Men's Wisdom.

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

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

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.

Each Act Of Cruelty Is Eternally A Part Of The Universe; Nothing That Happens Later Can Make That Act Good Rather Than Bad, Or Can Confer Perfection On The Whole Of Which It Is A Part.

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

Mathematics, Rightly Viewed, Possesses Not Only Truth, But Supreme Beauty-a Beauty Cold And Austere ... Yet Sublimely Pure And Capable Of Stern Perfection Such As Only The Greatest Art Can Show.

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?

There Are Certain Things That Our Age Needs, And Certain Things That It Should Avoid. It Needs Compassion And A Wish That Mankind Should Be Happy; It Needs The Desire For Knowledge And The Determination To Eschew Pleasant Myths; It Needs, Above All, Courageous Hope And The Impulse To Creativeness.

Patriotism Which Has The Quality Of Intoxication Is A Danger Not Only To Its Native Land But To The World, And "my Country Never Wrong" Is An Even More Dangerous Maxim Than "my Country, Right Or Wrong."

Only In Thought Is Man A God; In Action And Desire We Are The Slaves Of Circumstance.

It Will Be Found, As Men Grow More Tolerant In Their Instincts, That Many Uniformities Now Insisted Upon Are Useless And Even Harmful.

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.

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

Human Nature Is So Constructed That It Gives Affection Most Readily To Those Who Seem Least To Demand It.

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

All Movements Go Too Far.

Uncertainty In The Pressure Of Vivid Hopes And Fears Is Painful, But Must Be Endured If We Wish To Live Without The Support Of Comforting Fairy Tales.

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.

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

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

To Save The World Requires Faith And Courage: Faith In Reason, And Courage To Proclaim What Reason Shows To Be True.

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

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

Some Care Is Needed In Using Descartes' Argument. "i Think, Therefore I Am" Says Rather More Than Is Strictly Certain. It Might Seem As Though We Are Quite Sure Of Being The Same Person To-day As We Were Yesterday, And This Is No Doubt True In Some Sense. But The Real Self Is As Hard To Arrive At As The Real Table, And Does Not Seem To Have That Absolute, Convincing Certainty That Belongs To Particular Experiences.

Science Does Not Aim At Establishing Immutable Truths And Eternal Dogmas; Its Aim Is To Approach The Truth By Successive Approximations, Without Claiming That At Any Stage Final And Complete Accuracy Has Been Achieved.

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

[there Are M]oral Precepts That We Consider Really Important, Such As 'don't Pick Your Nose' Or 'don't Eat Peas With A Knife'. There May, For Ought I Know, Be Admirable Reasons For Eating Peas With A Knife, But . . . Early Persuasion Has Made Me Completely Incapable Of Appreciating Them.

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.

Man Can Be Scientifically Manipulated.

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