Background Image

...

Experience Has Taught Me A Technique For Dealing With Such People [...] I Counter The Devotees Of The Great Pyramid By Adoration Of The Sphinx; And The Devotee Of Nuts By Pointing Out That Hazelnuts And Walnuts Are As Deleterious As Other Foods And Only Brazil Nuts Should Be Tolerated. But When I Was Younger I Had Not Yet Acquired This Technique, With The Result That My Contacts With Cranks Were Sometimes Alarming.

-Bertrand Russell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Experience Has Taught Me

Bertrand Russell

...

Experience Has Taught Me A Technique For Dealing With Such People [...] I Counter The Devotees Of The Great Pyramid By Adoration Of The Sphinx; And The Devotee Of Nuts By Pointing Out That Hazelnuts And Walnuts Are As Deleterious As Other Foods And Only Brazil Nuts Should Be Tolerated. But When I Was Younger I Had Not Yet Acquired This Technique, With The Result That My Contacts With Cranks Were Sometimes Alarming.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Bertrand Russell

Change Is One Thing, Progress Is Another.

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

When Considering Marriage One Should Ask Oneself This Question; 'will I Be Able To Talk With This Person Into Old Age?' Everything Else Is Transitory, The Most Time Is Spent In Conversation.

Few People Can Be Happy Unless They Hate Some Other Person, Nation, Or Creed.

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.

Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy Of Logical Atomism We've Associated That Word Philosophy With Academic Study That In Its Own Way Has Gotten So Far Beyond The Layman That If You Read Contemporary Philosophy You've No Clue, Because It's Almost Become Math. And It's Odd That If You Don't Do That And You Call Yourself A Philosopher That You Always Get 'homespun' Attached To It.

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.

It Appeared That After First Contemplating A Book On Some Subject, And After Giving Serious Preliminary Attention To It, I Needed A Period Of Subconscious Incubation Which Could Not Be Hurried And Was If Anything Impeded By Deliberate Thinking.... Having, By A Time Of Very Intense Concentration, Planted The Problem In My Subconsciousness, It Would Germinate Underground Until, Suddenly, The Solution Emerged With A Blinding Clarity, So That It Only Remained To Write Down What Happened As If In A Revelation.

[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.

Arithmetic Must Be Discovered In Just The Same Sense In Which Columbus Discovered The West Indies, And We No More Create Numbers Than He Created The Indians.

... The Word "theory" ... Was Originally An Orphic Word, Which Cornford Interprets As "passionate Sympathetic Contemplation" ... For Pythagoras, The "passionate Sympathetic Contemplation" Was Intellectual, And Issued In Mathematical Knowledge ... To Those Who Have Reluctantly Learnt A Little Mathematics In School This May Seem Strange; But To Those Who Have Experienced The Intoxicating Delight Of Sudden Understanding That Mathematics Gives, From Time To Time, To Those Who Love It, The Pythagorean View Will Seem Completely Natural.

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.

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.

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

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not. I Am, However, Quite Certain That I Am Having Certain Experiences, Whether They Be Those Of A Dream Or Those Of Waking Life.

But I Simply Can't Stand A View Limited To This Earth, I Feel Life Is So Small Unless It Has Windows Into Other Worlds...i Like Mathematics Largely Because It Is Not Human.

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

The Fact That A Belief Has A Good Moral Effect Upon A Man Is No Evidence Whatsoever In Favor Of Its Truth. I'm Not Contending In A Dogmatic Way That There Is Not A God. What I'm Contending Is That We Don't Know That There Is. I Don't Like The Word "absolute." I Don't Think There Is Anything Absolute Whatever. The Moral Law, For Example, Is Always Changing. At One Period In The Development Of The Human Race, Almost Everybody Thought Cannibalism Was A Duty.

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.

Dont Let The Old Break You; Let The Love Make You

Machines Have Altered Our Way Of Life, But Not Our Instincts. Consequently, There Is Maladjustment.

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

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

The Knowledge Exists By Which Universal Happiness Can Be Secured; The Chief Obstacle To Its Utilization For That Purpose Is The Teaching Of Religion. Religion Prevents Our Children From Having A Rational Education; Religion Prevents Us From Removing The Fundamental Causes Of War; Religion Prevents Us From Teaching The Ethic Of Scientific Cooperation In Place Of The Old Fierce Doctrines Of Sin And Punishment. It Is Possible That Mankind Is On The Threshold Of A Golden Age; But, If So, It Will Be Necessary First To Slay The Dragon That Guards The Door, And This Dragon Is Religion.

To Teach How To Live Without Certainty And Yet Without Being Paralysed By Hesitation Is Perhaps The Chief Thing That Philosophy, In Our Age, Can Do For Those Who Study It.

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.

Right Discipline Consists, Not In External Compulsion, But In The Habits Of Mind Which Lead Spontaneously To Desirable Rather Than Undesirable Activities.

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.

No One Gossips About Other People's Secret Virtues.

Keeping Secrets

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.

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

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.

John Locke Invented Common Sense, And Only Englishmen Have Had It Ever Since!

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

Science And Religion

Half The Useful Work In The World Consists Of Combating The Harmful Work.

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

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

The Man Who Pursues Happiness Wisely Will Aim At The Possession Of A Number Of Subsidiary Interests In Addition To Those Central Ones Upon Which His Life Is Built.

Even In Civilized Mankind Faint Traces Of Monogamous Instinct Can Be Perceived.

Do Not Fear To Be Eccentric In Opinion, For Every Opinion Now Accepted Was Once Eccentric.

The People Who Are Regarded As Moral Luminaries Are Those Who Forego Ordinary Pleasures Themselves And Find Compensation In Interfering With The Pleasures Of Others.

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.

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

Bacon Not Only Despised The Syllogism, But Undervalued Mathematics, Presumably As Insufficiently Experimental. He Was Virulently Hostile To Aristotle , But He Thought Very Highly Of Democritus , Although He Did Not Deny That The Course Of Nature Exemplifies A Divine Purpose, He Objected To Any Admixture Of Teleological Explanation In The Actual Investigation Of Phenomena; Everything, He Held, Should Be Explained As Following Necessarily From Efficient Causes .

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

Lives Of Others

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

The Difficulty Is Old, But None The Less Real. An Omnipotent Being Who Created A World Containing Evil Not Due To Sin Must Himself Be At Least Partially Evil.

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.

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

I Am Myself A Dissenter From All Known Religions, And I Hope That Every Kind Of Religious Belief Will Die Out.

Every Isolated Passion, Is, In Isolation, Insane; Sanity May Be Defined As Synthesis Of Insanities. Every Dominant Passion Generates A Dominant Fear, The Fear Of Its Non-fulfillment. Every Dominant Fear Generates A Nightmare, Sometimes In Form Of Explicit And Conscious Fanaticism, Sometimes In Paralyzing Timidity, Sometimes In An Unconscious Or Subconscious Terror Which Finds Expression Only In Dreams. The Man Who Wishes To Preserve Sanity In A Dangerous World Should Summon In His Own Mind A Parliament Of Fears, In Which Each In Turn Is Voted Absurd By All The Others.

The Human Animal, Like Others, Is Adapted To A Certain Amount Of Struggle For Life [and] The Mere Absence Of Effort From His Life Removes An Essential Ingredient Of Happiness. [. . .] He Forgets That To Be Without Some Of The Things You Want Is An Indispensable Part Of Happiness.

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

For Some Reason Which I Have Failed To Understand, Many People Like The System [scientific Totalitarianism] When It Is Russian But Disliked The Very Same System When It Was German. I Am Compelled To Think That This Is Due To The Power Of Labels; These People Like Whatever Is Labelled ‘left’ Without Examining Whether The Label Has Any Justification.

...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.

I Do Not Pretend To Start With Precise Questions. I Do Not Think You Can Start With Anything Precise. You Have To Achieve Such Precision As You Can, As You Go Along.

I Do Wish I Believed In The Life Eternal, For It Makes Me Quite Miserable To Think Man Is Merely A Kind Of Machine Endowed, Unhappily For Himself, With Consciousness.

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

In Action, In Desire, We Must Submit Perpetually To The Tyranny Of Outside Forces; But In Thought, In Aspiration, We Are Free, Free From Our Fellowmen, Free From The Petty Planet On Which Our Bodies Impotently Crawl, Free Even, While We Live, From The Tyranny Of Death.

[there Has Been] Every Kind Of Cruelty Practiced Upon All Sorts Of People In The Name Of Religion.

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

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.

The Essence Of Life Is Doing Things For Their Own Sakes.

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.

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.

In The Visible World, The Milky Way Is A Tiny Fragment; Within This Fragment, The Solar System Is An Infinitesimal Speck, And Of This Speck Our Planet Is A Microscopic Dot. On This Dot, Tiny Lumps Of Impure Carbon And Water, Of Complicated Structure, With Somewhat Unusual Physical And Chemical Properties, Crawl About For A Few Years, Until They Are Dissolved Again Into The Elements Of Which They Are Compounded.

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

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.

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.

Dread Of Disaster Makes Everybody Act In The Very Way That Increases The Disaster.

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

That Plato's Republic Should Have Been Admired, On Its Political Side, By Decent People, Is Perhaps The Most Astonishing Example Of Literary Snobbery In All History.

Philosophy Bakes No Bread

What's The Difference Between A Bright, Inquisitive Five-year-old, And A Dull, Stupid Nineteen-year-old? Fourteen Years Of The British Educational System.

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.

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.

How Much Longer Is The World Willing To Endure This Spectacle Of Wanton Cruelty?

The Sea, The Stars, The Night Wind In Waste Places, Mean More To Me Than Even The Human Beings I Love Best.

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

There's A Bible On That Shelf There. But I Keep It Next To Voltaire - Poison And Antidote.

As Soon As It Is Held That Any Belief, No Matter What, Is Important For Some Other Reason Than That It Is True, A Whole Host Of Evils Is Ready To Spring Up.

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.

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

Freedom In Education Has Many Aspects. There Is First Of All Freedom To Learn Or Not To Learn. Then There Is Freedom As To What To Learn. And In Later Education There Is Freedom Of Opinion.

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

The Social Psychologist Of The Future Will Have A Number Of Classes Of School Children On Whom They Will Try Different Methods Of Producing An Unshakable Conviction That Snow Is Black. When The Technique Has Been Perfected, Every Government That Has Been In Charge Of Education For More Than One Generation Will Be Able To Control Its Subjects Securely Without The Need Of Armies Or Policemen.

One Of The Chief Triumphs Of Modern Mathematics Consists In Having Discovered What Mathematics Really Is.

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

The Habit Of Looking To The Future And Thinking That The Whole Meaning Of The Present Lies In What It Will Bring Forth Is A Pernicious One. There Can Be No Value In The Whole Unless There Is Value In The Parts.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

The Wise Man Will Be As Happy As Circumstances Permit, And If He Finds The Contemplation Of The Universe Painful Beyond A Point, He Will Contemplate Something Else Instead.

The Degree Of One's Emotions Varies Inversely With One's Knowledge Of The Facts - The Less You Know The Hotter You Get.

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

Self-respect Will Keep A Man From Being Abject When He Is In The Power Of Enemies, And Will Enable Him To Feel That He May Be In The Right When The World Is Against Him.

The Main Thing Needed To Make Men Happy Is Intelligence.

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

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

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

The Qualities Most Needed Are Charity And Tolerance, Not Some Form Of Fanatical Faith Such As Is Offered To Us By The Various Rampant Isms

These Illustrations Suggest Four General Maxims[...]. The First Is: Remember That Your Motives Are Not Always As Altruistic As They Seem To Yourself. The Second Is: Don't Over-estimate Your Own Merits. The Third Is: Don't Expect Others To Take As Much Interest In You As You Do Yourself. And The Fourth Is: Don't Imagine That Most People Give Enough Thought To You To Have Any Special Desire To Persecute You.

There Is In Aristotle An Almost Complete Absence Of What May Be Called Benevolence Or Philanthropy. The Sufferings Of Mankind . . . There Is No Evidence That They Cause Him Unhappiness Except When The Sufferers Happen To Be His Friends.

The Happiness That Is Genuinely Satisfying Is Accompanied By The Fullest Exercise Of Our Faculties And The Fullest Realization Of The World In Which We Live.

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.

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

Without Civic Morality Communities Perish; Without Personal Morality Their Survival Has No Value.

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

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

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 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.

For Love Of Domination We Must Substitute Equality; For Love Of Victory We Must Substitute Justice; For Brutality We Must Substitute Intelligence; For Competition We Must Substitute Cooperation. We Must Learn To Think Of The Human Race As One Family.

All The Important Human Advances That We Know Of Since Historical Times Began Have Been Due To Individuals Of Whom The Majority Faced Virulent Public Opposition.

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.

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.

Man Can Be Stimulated By Hope Or Driven By Fear, But The Hope And The Fear Must Be Vivid And Immediate If They Are To Be Effective Without Producing Weariness.

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

My Own Belief Is That In Most Ages And In Most Places Obscure Psychological Forces Led Men To Adopt Systems Involving Quite Unnecessary Cruelty, And That This Is Still The Case Among The Most Civilized Races At The Present Day.

Science Tells Us What We Can Know But What We Can Know Is Little And If We Forget How Much We Cannot Know We Become Insensitive Of Many Things Of Very Great Importance. Theology, On The Other Hand Induces A Dogmatic Belief That We Have Knowledge Where In Fact We Have Ignorance And By Doing So Generates A Kind Of Impertinent Insolence Towards The Universe. Uncertainty In The Presence Of Vivid Hopes And Fears Is Painful, But Must Be Endured If We Wish To Live Without The Support Of Comforting Fairy Tales.

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.

A Generation Educated In Fearless Freedom Will Have Wider And Bolder Hopes Than Are Possible To Us

A Life Without Adventure Is Likely To Be Unsatisfying, But A Life In Which Adventure Is Allowed To Take Whatever Form It Will Is Sure To Be Short.

Undoubtedly The Desire For Food Has Been And Still Is One Of The Main Causes Of Political Events.

I Hold All Knowledge That Is Concerned With Things That Actually Exist - All That Is Commonly Called Science - To Be Of Very Slight Value Compared To The Knowledge Which, Like Philosophy And Mathematics, Is Concerned With Ideal And Eternal Objects, And Is Freed From This Miserable World Which God Has Made.

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

I Cannot Favour Laws Such As That Of Idaho, Which Allows Sterilization Of 'mental Defectives, Epileptics, Habitual Criminals, Moral Degenerates, And Sex Perverts.' The Last Two Categories Here Are Very Vague . . . The Law Of Idaho Would Have Justified The Sterilization Of Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, And St. Paul.

Insight, Untested And Unsupported, Is An Uncertain Guarantee Of The Truth.

Bad Philosophers May Have A Certain Influence; Good Philosophers, Never.

In Spite Of Death, The Mark And Seal Of The Parental Control, Man Is Yet Free, During His Brief Years, To Examine, To Criticise, To Know, And In Imagination To Create. To Him Alone, In The World With Which He Is Acquainted, This Freedom Belongs; And In This Lies His Superiority To The Resistless Forces That Control His Outward Life.

Ants And Savages Put Strangers To Death.

Thee Will Find Out In Time That I Have A Great Love Of Professing Vile Sentiments, I Don't Know Why, Unless It Springs From Long Efforts To Avoid Priggery.

Worry Is A Form Of Fear.

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

Every Great Idea Starts Out As A Blasphemy.

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

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.

When Benjamin Franklin Invented The Lightning-rod, The Clergy, Both In England And America, With Enthusiastic Support Of George Iii, Condemned It As An Impious Attempt To Defeat The Will Of God.

England And America

Abstract Work, If One Wishes To Do It Well, Must Be Allowed To Destroy One's Humanity; One Raises A Monument Which Is At The Same Time A Tomb, In Which, Voluntarily, One Slowly Inters Oneself.

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.

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.

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

You May Reasonably Expect A Man To Walk A Tightrope Safely For Ten Minutes; It Would Be Unreasonable To Do So Without Accident For Two Hundred Years.

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

Our Beliefs Are, However, Often Contrary To Fact.

Much Of The Most Important Evils That Mankind Have To Consider Are Those Which They Inflict Upon Each Other Through Stupidity Or Malevolence Or Both.

War...seems A Mere Madness, A Collective Insanity.

The Argument Against The Persecution Of Opinion Does Not Depend Upon What The Excuse For Persecution May Be. The Argument Is That We None Of Us Know All Truth, That The Discovery Of New Truth Is Promoted By Free Discussion And Rendered Very Difficult By Suppression.

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.

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

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.

What Is Best In Mathematics Deserves Not Merely To Be Learnt As A Task, But To Assimilated As A Part Of Daily Thought, And Brought Again And Again Before The Mind With Ever-renewed Encouragement.

When The State Intervenes To Insure The Indoctrination Of Some Doctrine, It Does So Because There Is No Conclusive Evidence In Favor Of That Doctrine.

Human Life, Its Growth, Its Hopes, Fears, Loves, Et Cetera, Are The Result Of Accidents

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

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

It Is Essential To Happiness That Our Way Of Living Should Spring From Our Own Deep Impulses And Not From The Accidental Tastes And Desires Of Those Who Happen To Be Our Neighbors, Or Even Our Relations.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I Am Allowed To Use Plain English Because Everybody Knows That I Could Use Mathematical Logic If I Chose.

Mathematical Logic

Government Can Easily Exist Without Laws, But Law Cannot Exist Without Government.

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. Of These The Most Influential Is What Is Called 'education.' Religion Plays A Part, Though A Diminishing One; The Press, The Cinema, And The Radio Play An Increasing Part.... It May Be Hoped That In Time Anybody Will Be Able To Persuade Anybody Of Anything If He Can Catch The Patient Young And Is Provided By The State With Money And Equipment.

My First Advice (on How Not To Grow Old) Would Be To Choose You Ancestors Carefully.

Aristotle And Plato Considered Greeks So Innately Superior To Barbarians That Slavery Is Justified So Long As The Master Is Greek And The Slave Barbarian.

Although It Is A Gloomy View To Suppose That Life Will Die Out, Sometimes When I Contemplate The Things That People Do With Their Lives I Think It Is Almost A Consolation

When All Experts Agree, You Need To Watch Out.

The True Function Of Logic ... As Applied To Matters Of Experience ... Is Analytic Rather Than Constructive; Taken A Priori, It Shows The Possibility Of Hitherto Unsuspected Alternatives More Often Than The Impossibility Of Alternatives Which Seemed Prima Facie Possible. Thus, While It Liberates Imagination As To What The World May Be, It Refuses To Legislate As To What The World Is

The Most Savage Controversies Are About Matters As To Which There Is No Good Evidence Either Way.

Descartes, The Father Of Modern Philosophy ... Would Never-so He Assures Us-have Been Led To Construct His Philosophy If He Had Had Only One Teacher, For Then He Would Have Believed What He Had Been Told; But, Finding That His Professors Disagreed With Each Other, He Was Forced To Conclude That No Existing Doctrine Was Certain.

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.

It Appeared To Me That The Dignity Of Which Human Existence Is Capable Is Not Attainable By Devotion To The Mechanism Of Life , And That Unless Contemplation Of Eternal Things Is Preserved, Mankind Will Become No Better Than Well-fed Pigs.

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

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

Even If We Could Be Certain That One Of The World's Religions Were Perfectly True, Given The Sheer Number Of Conflicting Faiths On Offer, Every Believer Should Expect Damnation Purely As A Matter Of Probability.

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

Righteousness Cannot Be Born Until Self-righteousness Is Dead.

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

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

As I Grew Up I Became Increasingly Interested In Philosophy, Or Which [his Family] Profoundly Disapproved. Everytime The Subject Came Up They Repeated With Unfailing Regularity, "what Is Mind? No Matter. What Is Matter? Never Mind." After Some Fifty Or Sixty Repititions, This Remark Ceased To Amuse Me.

Our Individual Life Is Brief, And Perhaps The Whole Life Of Mankind Will Be Brief If Measured In Astronomical Scale

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.

The Problem With The Wise Is They Are So Filled With Doubts While The Dull Are So Certain.

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.

Fools And Fanatics Are Always So Certain Of Themselves.

Thought Provoking

Diversity Is Essential To Happiness And In Utopia There Is Hardly Any. This Is A Defect In All Planned Social Systems.

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

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

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 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.

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

Cruelty Is, In Theory, A Perfectly Adequate Ground For Divorce, But It May Be Interpreted So As To Become Absurd.

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.

Trending Author

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Category