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I Think People Who Are Unhappy Are Always Proud Of Being So, And Therefore Do Not Like To Be Told That There Is Nothing Grand About Their Unhappiness. A Man Who Is Melancholy Because Lack Of Exercise Has Upset His Liver Always Believes That It Is The Loss Of God, Or The Menace Of Bolshevism, Or Some Such Dignified Cause That Makes Him Sad. When You Tell People That Happiness Is A Simple Matter, They Get Annoyed With You.

-Bertrand Russell

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I Think People Who

Bertrand Russell

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I Think People Who Are Unhappy Are Always Proud Of Being So, And Therefore Do Not Like To Be Told That There Is Nothing Grand About Their Unhappiness. A Man Who Is Melancholy Because Lack Of Exercise Has Upset His Liver Always Believes That It Is The Loss Of God, Or The Menace Of Bolshevism, Or Some Such Dignified Cause That Makes Him Sad. When You Tell People That Happiness Is A Simple Matter, They Get Annoyed With You.

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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.

The Law Of Causality, I Believe, Like Much That Passes Muster Among Philosophers, Is A Relic Of A Bygone Age, Surviving, Like The Monarchy, Only Because It Is Erroneously Supposed To Do No Harm.

We Are Faced With The Paradoxical Fact That Education Has Become One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence And Freedom Of Thought.

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

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.

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

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.

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

As For Earthquakes, Though They Were Still Formidable, They Were So Interesting That Men Of Science Could Hardly Regret Them.

A Process Which Led From The Amoeba To Man Appeared To The Philosophers To Be Obviously A Progress Though Whether The Amoeba Would Agree With This Opinion Is Not Known.

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

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.

I Greatly Doubt Whether The Men Who Become Pirate Chiefs Are Those Who Are Filled With Retrospective Terror Of Their Fathers, Or Whether Napoleon , At Austerlitz, Really Felt That He Was Getting Even With Madame Mère. I Know Nothing Of The Mother Of Attila , But I Rather Suspect That She Spoilt The Little Darling, Who Subsequently Found The World Irritating Because It Sometimes Resisted His Whims.

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

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

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

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 World That We Must Seek Is A World In Which The Creative Spirit Is Alive, In Which Life Is An Adventure Full Of Joy And Hope, Based Rather Upon The Impulse To Construct Than Upon The Desire To Retain What We Possess Or To Seize What Is Possessed By Others.

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

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

People Are Said To Believe In God, Or To Disbelieve In Adam And Eve. But In Such Cases What Is Believed Or Disbelieved Is That There Is An Entity Answering A Certain Description. This, Which Can Be Believed Or Disbelieved Is Quite Different From The Actual Entity (if Any) Which Does Answer The Description. Thus The Matter Of Belief Is, In All Cases, Different In Kind From The Matter Of Sensation Or Presentation, And Error Is In No Way Analogous To Hallucination. A Hallucination Is A Fact, Not An Error; What Is Erroneous Is A Judgment Based Upon It.

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

Never Try To Discourage Thinking, For You Are Sure To Succeed.

The Puritanism Of Christianity Has Played Havoc With The Moderation That An Enlightened And Tolerant Critical Spirit Would Have Produced. I've Noticed That In Whatever Country, County, Town, Or Other Region There Is A Regulation Enjoining Temperance, The Population Seems To Be Entirely Composed Of Teetotallers And Drunkards. There's A Bible On That Shelf There. But I Keep It Next To Voltaire - Poison And Antidote.

Berkeley Retains The Merit Of Having Shown That The Existence Of Matter Is Capable Of Being Denied Without Absurdity.

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

The Whole Conception Of A God Is A Conception Derived From The Ancient Oriental Despotisms. It Is A Conception Quite Unworthy Of Free Men. We Ought To Stand Up And Look The World Frankly In The Face. We Ought To Make The Best We Can Of The World, And If It Is Not So Good As We Wish, After All It Will Still Be Better Than What These Others Have Made Of It In All These Ages.

A Man Of Seville Is Shaved By The Barber Of Seville If And Only If The Man Does Not Shave Himself. Does The Barber Shave Himself?

But Courage In Fighting Is By No Means The Only Form, Nor Perhaps Even The Most Important. There Is Courage In Facing Poverty, Courage In Facing Derision, Courage In Facing The Hostility Of One's Own Herd. In These, The Bravest Soldiers Are Often Lamentably Deficient. And Above All There Is The Courage To Think Calmly And Rationally In The Face Of Danger, And To Control The Impulse Of Panic Fear Or Panic Rage.

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

Dr. Arnold . . . The Admired Reformer Of Public Schools, Came Across Some Cranks Who Thought It A Mistake To Flog Boys. Anyone Reading His Outburst Of Furious Indignation Against This Opinion Will Be Forced To The Conclusion That He Enjoyed Inflicting Floggings.

Beware The Man Of The Single Book

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

It Is Amusing To Hear The Modern Christian Telling You How Mild And Rationalistic Christianity Really Is And Ignoring The Fact That All Its Mildness And Rationalism Is Due To The Teaching Of Men Who In Their Own Day Were Persecuted By All Orthodox Christians.

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.

Moral Indignation Is One Of The Most Harmful Forces In The Modern World, The More So As It Can Always Be Diverted To Sinister Uses By Those Who Control Propaganda.

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

The Life Of Man Is A Long March Through The Night, Surrounded By Invisible Foes, Tortured By Weariness And Pain, Towards A Goal That Few Can Hope To Reach, And Where None May Tarry Long.

The Solution Of The Difficulties Which Formerly Surrounded The Mathematical Infinite Is Probably The Greatest Achievement Of Which Our Age Has To Boast.

We May Say, In A Broad Way, That Greek Philosophy Down To Aristotle Expresses The Mentality Appropriate To The City State; That Stoicism Is Appropriate To A Cosmopolitan Despotism; That Stochastic Philosophy Is An Intellectual Expression Of The Church As An Organization; That Philosophy Since Descartes, Or At Any Rate Since Locke, Tends To Embody The Prejudices Of The Commercial Middle Class; And That Marxism And Fascism Are The Philosophies Appropriate To The Modern Industrial State.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Men Are Born Ignorant, Not Stupid. They Are Made Stupid By Education.

An Individual Human Existence Should Be Like A River

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

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.

I Have Come To Realize That An Early Symptom Of Approaching Mental Illness Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important. If You Consider Your Work Very Important You Should Take A Day Off.

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.

The Tendency Of Our Perceptions Is To Emphasise Increasingly The Objective Elements In An Impression, Unless We Have Some Special Reason, As Artists Have, For Doing The Opposite.

Those Who Advocate Common Usage In Philosophy Sometimes Speak In A Manner That Suggests The Mystique Of The 'common Man.'

No Man Treats A Motorcar As Foolishly As He Treats Another Human Being. When The Car Will Not Go, He Does Not Attribute Its Annoying Behavior To Sin; He Does Not Say, 'you Are A Wicked Motorcar, And I Shall Not Give You Any More Petrol Until You Go.' He Attempts To Find Out What Is Wrong And To Set It Right.

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

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

What The World Needs Is Not Dogma But An Attitude Of Scientific Inquiry.

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

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.

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

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

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.

All Movements Go Too Far.

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

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

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

The Newspapers At One Time Said That I Was Dead But After Carefully Examining The Evidence I Came To The Conclusion That This Statement Was False.

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid, And However Unpleasant The Truth May Be, It Is Better To Face It Once And For All, To Get Used To It, And To Proceed To Build Your Life In Accordance With It.

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

There Is Little Of The True Philosophic Spirit In Aquinas. He Does Not, Like The Platonic Socrates, Set Out To Follow Wherever The Argument May Lead.

The Eugenic Society . . . Is Perpetually Bewailing The Fact That Wage-earners Breed Faster Than Middle-class People.

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

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.

Some People Would Rather Die Than Think.

Not To Be Absolutely Certain Is, I Think, One Of The Essential Things In Rationality.

Doubt And Certainty

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.

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

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

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.

We Believe, First And Foremost, What Makes Us Feel That We Are Fine Fellows.

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.

Religions, Which Condemn The Pleasures Of Sense, Drive Men To Seek The Pleasures Of Power. Throughout History Power Has Been The Vice Of The Ascetic.

Mathematics Is, I Believe, The Chief Source Of The Belief In Eternal And Exact Truth, As Well As A Sensible Intelligible World.

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.

Much That Passes As Idealism Is Disguised Hatred Or Disguised Love Of Power.

Idealism And Realism

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

The Demand For Certainty Is One Which Is Natural To Man, But Is Nevertheless An Intellectual Vice. If You Take Your Children For A Picnic On A Doubtful Day, They Will Demand A Dogmatic Answer As To Whether It Will Be Fine Or Wet, And Be Disappointed In You When You Cannot Be Sure.

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

All The Conditions Of Happiness Are Realized In The Life Of The Man Of Science.

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

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.

Modern Definitions Of Truth, Such As Those As Pragmatism And Instrumentalism, Which Are Practical Rather Than Contemplative, Are Inspired By Industrialisation As Opposed To Aristocracy.

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.

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.

It Is A Curious And Painful Fact That Almost All The Completely Futile Treatments That Have Been Believed In During The Long History Of Medical Folly Have Been Such As Caused Acute Suffering To The Patient. When Anesthetics Were Discovered, Pious People Considered Them An Attempt To Evade The Will Of God. It Was Pointed Out, However, That When God Extracted Adam's Rib He Put Him Into A Deep Sleep. This Proved That Anesthetics Are All Right For Men; Women, However, Ought To Suffer, Because Of The Curse Of Eve.

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

Man Is A Credulous Animal, And Must Believe Something; In The Absence Of Good Grounds For Belief, He Will Be Satisfied With Bad Ones.

Suppose Atomic Bombs Had Reduced The Population Of The World To One Brother And Sister; Should They Let The Human Race Die Out?

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

If The Church Is Not Now As Bad As The Soviet Government, That Is Due To The Influence Of Those Who Attacked The Church

Men Fear Thought As They Fear Nothing Else On Earth - More Than Ruin, More Even Than Death. Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habits; Thought Is Anarchic And Lawless, Indifferent To Authority, Careless Of The Well-tried Wisdom Of The Ages. Thought Looks Into The Pit Of Hell And Is Not Afraid ... Thought Is Great And Swift And Free, The Light Of The World, And The Chief Glory Of Man.

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

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

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

The Human Race May Well Become Extinct Before The End Of The Century.

Mathematics Is Only The Art Of Saying The Same Thing In Different Words.

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.

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

Good Nature Is, Of All Moral Qualities, The One That The World Needs Most, And Good Nature Is The Result Of Ease And Security, Not Of A Life Of Arduous Struggle.

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

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

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

When People Begin To Philosophize They Seem To Think It Necessary To Make Themselves Artificially Stupid.

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

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

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

The Luxury To Disparage Freedom Is The Privilege Of Those Who Already Possess It.

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.

Boys And Young Men Acquire Readily The Moral Sentiments Of Their Social Milieu, Whatever These Sentiments May Be.

Men Who Are Unhappy, Like Men Who Sleep Badly, Are Always Proud Of The Fact.

I Am Compelled To Fear That Science Will Be Used To Promote The Power Of Dominant Groups Rather Than To Make Men Happy.

A Word Is Used "correctly" When The Average Hearer Will Be Affected By It In The Way Intended. This Is A Psychological, Not A Literary, Definition Of "correctness". The Literary Definition Would Substitute, For The Average Hearer, A Person Of High Education Living A Long Time Ago; The Purpose Of This Definition Is To Make It Difficult To Speak Or Write Correctly.

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.

Boys And Girls Should Be Taught Respect For Each Other's Liberty... And That Jealousy And Possessiveness Kill Love.

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.

There May Be No Good Reasons For Very Many Opinions That Are Held With Passion.

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.

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.

The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

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.

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.

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

Asking Questions

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.

Language Serves Not Only To Express Thought But To Make Possible Thoughts Which Could Not Exist Without It.

Fanaticism Is The Danger Of The World, And Always Has Been, And Has Done Untold Harm. I Might Almost Say That I Was Fanatical Against Fanaticism.

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.

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

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

Force Plays A Much Larger Part In The Government Of The World Than It Did Before 1914, And What Is Especially Alarming, Force Tends Increasingly To Fall Into The Hands Of Those Who Are Enemies Of Civilization.

The Essence Of Good Manners Consists In Making It Clear That One Has No Wish To Hurt. When It Is Clearly Necessary To Hurt, It Must Be Done In Such A Way As To Make It Evident That The Necessity Is Felt To Be Regrettable.

The Axiomatic Method Has Many Advantages Over Honest Work.

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

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.

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.

We All Have A Tendency To Think That The World Must Conform To Our Prejudices. The Opposite View Involves Some Effort Of Thought, And Most People Would Die Sooner Than Think In Fact They Do So.

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

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

True Happiness For Human Beings Is Possible Only To Those Who Develop Their Godlike Potentialities To The Utmost.

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

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.

The Most Essential Characteristic Of Scientific Technique Is That It Proceeds From Experiment, Not From Tradition. The Experimental Habit Of Mind Is A Difficult One For Most People To Maintain; Indeed, The Science Of One Generation Has Already Become The Tradition Of The Next

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

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

The Late F. W. H. Myers Used To Tell How He Asked A Man At A Dinner Table What He Thought Would Happen To Him When He Died. The Man Tried To Ignore The Question, But, On Being Pressed, Replied: "oh Well, I Suppose I Shall Inherit Eternal Bliss, But I Wish You Wouldn't Talk About Such Unpleasant Subjects."

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The World That I Should Wish To See Would Be One Freed From The Virulence Of Group Hostilities And Capable Of Realizing That Happiness For All Is To Be Derived Rather From Co-operation Than From Strife. I Should Wish To See A World In Which Education Aimed At Mental Freedom Rather Than Imprisoning The Minds Of The Young In Rigid Armor Of Dogma Calculated To Protect Them Through Life Against The Shafts Of Impartial Evidence.

To Be Without Some Of The Things You Want Is An Indispensable Part Of Happiness.

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 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.

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.

The Purpose Of Education Is To Teach A Defense Against Eloquence.

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

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.

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.

Folly Is Perennial And Yet The Human Race Has Survived.

That The World Is In A Bad Shape Is Undeniable, But There Is Not The Faintest Reason In History To Suppose That Christianity Offers A Way Out.

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.

Memory Demands An Image.

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.

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.

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.

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

Every Living Thing Is A Sort Of Imperialist, Seeking To Transform As Much As Possible Of Its Environment Into Itself.

I Was Told That The Chinese Said They Would Bury Me By The Western Lake And Build A Shrine To My Memory. I Have Some Slight Regret That This Did Not Happen, As I Might Have Become A God, Which Would Have Been Very Chic For An Atheist.

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

The Finding Of Arguments For A Conclusion Given In Advance Is Not Philosophy, But Special Pleading

The Best Life Is The One In Which The Creative Impulses Play The Largest Part And The Possessive Impulses The Smallest.

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.

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

Every Increase In Knowledge Requires An Increase In Wisdom

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

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