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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.

-Bertrand Russell

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I Think It Would

Bertrand Russell

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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.

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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.

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

The More Intense Has Been The Religion Of Any Period And The More Profound Has Been The Dogmatic Belief, The Greater Has Been The Cruelty And The Worse Has Been The State Of Affairs.

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.

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

The Fact That A Belief Has A Good Moral Effect Upon A Man Is No Evidence Whatsoever In Favor Of Its Truth.

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

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

This Is One Of Those Views Which Are So Absolutely Absurd That Only Very Learned Men Could Possibly Adopt Them.

Africans Had To Be Taught That Nudity Is Wicked; This Was Done Very Cheaply By Missionaries.

The White Tails Of Rabbits, According To Some Theologians, Have A Purpose, Namely To Make It Easier For Sportsmen To Shoot Them.

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

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.

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.

In The Revolt Against Idealism, The Ambiguities Of The Word Experience Have Been Perceived, With The Result That Realists Have More And More Avoided The Word.

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.

From That Awful Encounter Of The Soul With The Outer World, Enunciation, Wisdom, And Charity Are Born; And With Their Birth A New Life Begins. To Take Into The Inmost Shrine Of The Soul The Irresistible Forces Whose Puppets We Seem To Be - Death And Change, The Irrevocableness Of The Past, And The Powerlessness Of Man Before The Blind Hurry Of The Universe From Vanity To Vanity - To Feel These Things And Know Them Is To Conquer Them.

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

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.

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

I've Made An Odd Discovery. Every Time I Talk To A Savant I Feel Quite Sure That Happiness Is No Longer A Possibility. Yet When I Talk With My Gardener, I'm Convinced Of The Opposite.

All Traditional Logic Habitually Assumes That Precise Symbols Are Being Employed. It Is Therefore Not Applicable To This Terrestial Life But Only To An Imagined Celestial Existence... Logic Takes Us Nearer To Heaven Than Other Studies.

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.

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

One Is Often Told That It Is A Very Wrong Thing To Attack Religion, Because Religion Makes Men Virtuous. So I Am Told; I Have Not Noticed It.

When You Meet With Opposition, Even If It Should Be From Your Husband Or Your Children, Endeavor To Overcome It By Argument And Not By Authority, For A Victory Dependent Upon Authority Is Unreal And Illusory.

Philosophy Is That Part Of Science Which At Present People Chose To Have Opinions About, But Which They Have No Knowledge About. Therefore Every Advance In Knowledge Robs Philosophy Of Some Problems Which Formerly It Had ...and Will Belong To Science.

Change Is One Thing, Progress Is Another.

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

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.

Religion May In Most Of Its Forms Be Defined As The Belief That The Gods Are On The Side Of The Government.

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

After Ages During Which The Earth Produced Harmless Trilobites And Butterflies, Evolution Progressed To The Point At Which It Generated Neros, Genghis Khans, And Hitlers. This, However, Is A Passing Nightmare; In Time The Earth Will Become Again Incapable Of Supporting Life, And Peace Will Return.

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.

All Serious Innovation Is Only Rendered Possible By Some Accident Enabling Unpopular Persons To Survive.

A Physicist Looks For Causes; That Does Not Necessarily Imply That There Are Causes Everywhere. A Man May Look For Gold Without Assuming That There Is Gold Everywhere; If He Finds Gold, Well And Good, If He Doesn't He's Had Bad Luck. The Same Is True When The Physicists Look For Causes.

When All Experts Agree, You Need To Watch Out.

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

A Life Devoted To Science Is Therefore A Happy Life, And Its Happiness Is Derived From The Very Best Sources That Are Open To Dwellers On This Troubled And Passionate Planet.

It Is Obviously Possible That What We Call Waking Life May Only Be An Unusual And Persistent Nightmare.

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.

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

Italy, And The Spring And First Love All Together Should Suffice To Make The Gloomiest Person Happy.

There Seems Scarcely Any Limit To What Could Be Done In The Way Of Producing A Good World, If Only Men Would Use Science Wisely.

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

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

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

In Science The Successors Stand Upon The Shoulders Of Their Predecessors; Where One Man Of Supreme Genius Has Invented A Method, A Thousand Lesser Men Can Apply It. ... In Art Nothing Worth Doing Can Be Done Without Genius; In Science Even A Very Moderate Capacity Can Contribute To A Supreme Achievement.

What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

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

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.

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.

Unfortunately, However, Power Is Sweet, And The Man Who In The Beginning Seeks Power Merely In Order To Have Scope For His Benevolence Is Likely, Before Long, To Love The Power For Its Own Sake.

The Root Of The Matter Is A Very Simple And Old Fashioned Thing... Love Or Compassion. If You Feel This, You Have A Motive For Existence, A Guide For Action, A Reason For Courage, An Imperative Necessity For Intellectual Honesty.

The Human Heart As Modern Civilization Has Made It Is More Prone To Hatred Than To Friendship. And It Is Prone To Hatred Because It Is Dissatisfied.

With 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.

At All Times, Except When A Monarch Could Enforce His Will, War Has Been Facilitated By The Fact That Vigorous Males, Confident Of Victory, Enjoyed It, While Their Females Admired Them For Their Prowess.

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.

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

Lives Of Others

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.

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

Remember Your Humanity, And Forget The Rest.

It Has Been Said That Man Is A Rational Animal. All My Life I Have Been Searching For Evidence Which Could Support This.

When You Want To Teach Children To Think, You Begin By Treating Them Seriously When They Are Little, Giving Them Responsibilities, Talking To Them Candidly, Providing Privacy And Solitude For Them, And Making Them Readers And Thinkers Of Significant Thoughts From The Beginning. That’s If You Want To Teach Them To Think.

It Is In Our Hearts That Evil Lies, And It Is From Our Hearts That It Must Be Plucked Out.

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

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.

On The One Hand, Philosophy Is To Keep Us Thinking About Things That We May Come To Know, And On The Other Hand To Keep Us Modestly Aware Of How Much That Seems Like Knowledge Isn't Knowledge

The Teaching Of Christ, As It Appears In The Gospels, Has Had Extraordinarily Little To Do With The Ethics Of Christians.

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

We Need A Science To Save Us From Science.

Most Of The Greatest Evils That Man Has Inflicted Upon Man Have Come Through People Feeling Quite Certain About Something Which, In Fact, Was False.

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

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.

The Main Things Which Seem To Me Important On Their Own Account, And Not Merely As Means To Other Things, Are Knowledge, Art, Instinctive Happiness, And Relations Of Friendship Or Affection.

Every Housemaid Expects At Least Once A Week As Much Excitement As Would Have Lasted A Jane Austen Heroine Throughout A Whole Novel.

Continuity Of Purpose Is One Of The Most Essential Ingredients Of Happiness In The Long Run, And For Most Men That Comes Chiefly Through Their Work.

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.

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.

One Of The Most Painful Circumstances Of Recent Advances In Science Is That Each One Makes Us Know Less Than We Thought We Did

He Will See Himself And Life And The World As Truly As Our Human Limitations Will Permit; Realizing The Brevity And Minuteness Of Human Life, He Will Realize Also That In Individual Minds Is Concentrated Whatever Of Value The Known Universe Contains.

It Is For This Reason That Rationality Is Of Supreme Importance To The Well-being Of The Human Species...even More, In Those Less Fortunate Times In Which It Is Despised And Rejected As The Vain Dream Of Men Who Lack The Virility To Kill Where They Cannot Agree.

I Do Not Myself Feel That Any Person Who Is Really Profoundly Humane Can Believe In Everlasting Punishment.

Freedom In General May Be Defined As The Absence Of Obstacles To The Realization Of Desires.

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.

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.

In The Higher Walks Of Politics The Same Sort Of Thing Occurs. The Statesman Who Has Gradually Concentrated All Power Within Himself ... May Have Had Anything But A Public Motive... The Phrases Which Are Customary On The Platform And In The Party Press Have Gradually Come To Him To Seem To Express Truths, And He Mistakes The Rhetoric Of Partisanship For A Genuine Analysis Of Motives... He Retires From The World After The World Has Retired From Him.

If One Lived For Ever The Joys Of Life Would Inevitably In The End Lose Their Savour. As It Is, They Remain Perennially Fresh.

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

In The Daily Lives Of Most Men And Women, Fear Plays A Greater Part Than Hope: They Are More Filled With The Thought Of The Possessions That Others May Take From Them, Than Of The Joy That They Might Create In Their Own Lives And In The Lives With Which They Come In Contact. It Is Not So That Life Should Be Lived.

By Self-interest, Man Has Become Gregarious, But In Instinct He Has Remained To A Great Extent Solitary; Hence The Need Of Religion And Morality To Reinforce Self-interest.

People Will Tell Us That Without The Consolations Of Religion They Would Be Intolerably Unhappy. So Far As This Is True, It Is A Coward's Argument. Nobody But A Coward Would Consciously Choose To Live In A Fool's Paradise. When A Man Suspects His Wife Of Infidelity, He Is Not Thought The Better Of For Shutting His Eyes To The Evidence. And I Cannot See Why Ignoring Evidence Should Be Contemptible In One Case And Admirable In The Other.

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

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.

I Like Mathematics Because It Is Not Human And Has Nothing Particular To Do With This Planet Or With The Whole Accidental Universe - Because, Like Spinoza's God, It Won't Love Us In Return.

The Legacy Of Greece To Western Philosophy Is Western Philosophy.

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

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.

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 .

There Is No Logical Impossibility In The Hypothesis That The World Sprang Into Being Five Minutes Ago, Exactly As It Then Was, With A Population That "remembered" A Wholly Unreal Past. There Is No Logically Necessary Connection Between Events At Different Times; Therefore Nothing That Is Happening Now Or Will Happen In The Future Can Disprove The Hypothesis That The World Began Five Minutes Ago.

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.

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

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

Our Great Democracies Still Tend To Think That A Stupid Man Is More Likely To Be Honest Than A Clever Man.

One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence Is Credulity, And Credulity Could Be Enormously Diminished By Instructions As To The Prevalent Forms Of Mendacity. Credulity Is A Greater Evil In The Present Day Than It Ever Was Before, Because, Owing To The Growth Of Education, It Is Much Easier Than It Used To Be To Spread Misinformation, And, Owing To Democracy, The Spread Of Misinformation Is More Important Than In Former Times To The Holders Of Power.

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

Only Mathematics And Mathematical Logic Can Say As Little As The Physicist Means To Say.

Mathematical Logic

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.

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.

It's Easy To Fall In Love. The Hard Part Is Finding Someone To Catch You.

Falling In Love

New Relationship

I Don't Like The Spirit Of Socialism - I Think Freedom Is The Basis Of Everything.

The Fundamental Principle In The Analysis Of Propositions Containing Descriptions Is This: Every Proposition Which We Can Understand Must Be Composed Wholly Of Constituents With Which We Are Acquainted.

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

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

I Must, Before I Die, Find Some Way To Say The Essential Thing That Is In Me, That I Have Never Said Yet -- A Thing That Is Not Love Or Hate Or Pity Or Scorn, But The Very Breath Of Life, Fierce And Coming From Far Away, Bringing Into Human Life The Vastness And The Fearful Passionless Force Of Non-human Things.

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.

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

Are You Never Afraid Of God's Judgement In Denying Him? Most Certainly Not. I Also Deny Zeus And Jupiter And Odin And Brahma, But This Causes Me No Qualms. I Observe That A Very Large Portion Of The Human Race Does Not Believe In God And Suffers No Visible Punishment In Consequence. And If There Were A God, I Think It Very Unlikely That He Would Have Such An Uneasy Vanity As To Be Offended By Those Who Doubt His Existence.

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.

Opinions Which Justify Cruelty Are Inspired By Cruel Impulses.

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.

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

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.

A Good Social System Is Not To Be Secured By Making People Unselfish, But, By Making Their Own Vital Impulses Fit In With Other Peoples. This Is Feasible. Those Who Have Produced Stoic Philosophies Have All Had Enough To Eat And Drink. I Feel I Shall Find The Truth On My Deathbed And Be Surrounded By People Too Stupid To Understand—fussing About Medicines Instead Of Searching For Wisdom. I Hate Being All Tidy Like A Book In A Library Where Nobody Reads – Prison Is Horribly Like That.

Advocates Of Capitalism Are Very Apt To Appeal To The Sacred Principles Of Liberty, Which Are Embodied In One Maxim: The Fortunate Must Not Be Restrained In The Exercise Of Tyranny Over The Unfortunate.

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

Positive Thinking

It Is Likely That America Will Be More Important During The Next Century Or Two, But After That It May Well Be The Turn Of China.

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.

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

If We Compare Europe With Other Continents, It Is Marked Out As [another] Persecuting Continent.

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

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

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

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.

There Lies Before Us, If We Choose, Continual Progress In Happiness, Knowledge And Wisdom. Shall We Instead Choose Death, Because We Cannot Forget Our Quarrels? I Appeal As A Human Being To Human Beings; Remember Your Humanity, And Forget The Rest.

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

Procrastination

The Triumph Of Science Has Been Mainly Due To Its Practical Utility, And There Has Been An Attempt To Divorce This Aspect From That Of Theory, Thus Making Science More And More A Technique, And Less And Less A Doctrine As To The Nature Of The World. The Penetration Of This Point Of View To Philosophers Is Very Recent.

When One Admits That Nothing Is Certain One Must, I Think, Also Admit That Some Things Are Much More Nearly Certain Than Others.

Plato Has Dramatic Strength ... But Is Quite Unaware Of The Strength Of The Argument Against His Position ... And Allows Himself To Be Grossly Unfair In Arguing Against It.

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.

It Seems To Me A Fundamental Dishonesty, And A Fundamental Treachery To Intellectual Integrity To Hold A Belief Because You Think It's Useful And Not Because You Think It's True.

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

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

[one] Must Look Into Hell Before One Has Any Right To Speak Of Heaven.

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

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.

There Are Infinite Possibilities Of Error, And More Cranks Take Up Fashionable Untruths Than Unfashionable Truths.

All That Passes For Knowledge Can Be Arranged In A Hierarchy Of Degrees Of Certainty, With Arithmetic And The Facts Of Perception At The Top.

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.

I Can Only Say That, While My Own Opinions As To Ethics Do Not Satisfy Me, Other People's Satisfy Me Still Less.

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

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

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

No One Gossips About Other People's Secret Virtues.

Keeping Secrets

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.

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.

What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot Know.

Modern Life Cannot Be Constructed On . . . Physically Strenuous Principles. A Great Deal Of Work Is Sedentary, And Most Manual Work Exercises Only A Few Specialized Muscles.

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.

Our Instinctive Emotions Are Those That We Have Inherited From A Much More Dangerous World, And Contain, Therefore, A Larger Portion Of Fear Than They Should.

Dangerous World

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

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.

Indemnity For The Past And Security For The Future.

Love, Children, And Work, Are The Great Sources Of Fertilizing Contact Between The Individual And The Rest Of The World.

The Widespread Interest In Gossip Is Inspired, Not By A Love Of Knowledge But By Malice: No One Gossips About Other People's Secret Virtues, But Only About Their Secret Vices. Accordingly Most Gossip Is Untrue, But Care Is Taken Not To Verify It. Our Neighbour's Sins, Like The Consolations Of Religion, Are So Agreeable That We Do Not Stop To Scrutinise The Evidence Closely.

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.

Beggars Do Not Envy Millionaires, Though Of Course They Will Envy Other Beggars Who Are More Successful.

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

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

A Habit Of Finding Pleasure In Thought Rather Than Action Is A Safeguard Against Unwisdom And Excessive Love Of Power, A Means Of Preserving Serenity In Misfortune And Peace Of Mind Among Worries. A Life Confined To What Is Personal Is Likely, Sooner Or Later, To Become Unbearably Painful; It Is Only By Windows Into A Larger And Less Fretful Cosmos That The More Tragic Parts Of Life Become Endurable.

Even When The Experts All Agree, They May Well Be Mistaken.

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

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.

At The Age Of Eleven, I Began Euclid, With My Brother As My Tutor. This Was One Of The Great Events Of My Life, As Dazzling As First Love. I Had Not Imagined There Was Anything So Delicious In The World. From That Moment Until I Was Thirty-eight, Mathematics Was My Chief Interest And My Chief Source Of Happiness.

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.

War Grows Out Of Ordinary Human Nature.

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

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.

Through The Greatness Of The Universe, Which Philosophy Contemplates, The Mind Also Is Rendered Great, And Becomes Capable Of That Union With The Universe Which Constitutes Its Highest Good.

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

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?

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

Whether Science-and Indeed Civilization In General-can Long Survive Depends Upon Psychology, That Is To Say, It Depends Upon What Human Beings Desire.

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.

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.

Almost All Education Has A Political Motive.

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.

I Found One Day In School A Boy Of Medium Size Ill-treating A Smaller Boy. I Expostulated, But He Replied: "the Bigs Hit Me, So I Hit The Babies; That's Fair." In These Words He Epitomized The History Of The Human Race.

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

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.

A Life Which Goes Excessively Against Natural Impulse Is... Likely To Involve Effects Of Strain That May Be Quite As Bad As Indulgence In Forbidden Impulses Would Have Been. People Who Live A Life Which Is Unnatural Beyond A Point Are Likely To Be Filled With Envy, Malice And Uncharitableness.

Even In The Most Purely Logical Realms, It Is Insight That First Arrives At What Is New.

Common Sense, However It Tries, Cannot Avoid Being Surprised From Time To Time.

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

Citizens As Conceived By Governments Are Persons Who Admire The Status Quo And Are Prepared To Exert Themselves For Its Preservation. Oddly Enough, While All Governments Aim At Producing Men Of This Type To The Exclusion Of All Other Types, Their Heroes In The Past Are Of Exactly The Sort That They Aim At Preventing In The Present. Americans Admire George Washington And Jefferson, But Imprison Those Who Share Their Political Opinions.

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.

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

Ethics Is In Origin The Art Of Recommending To Others The Sacrifices Required For Cooperation With Oneself.

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

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