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

-Bertrand Russell

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If Life Is To

Bertrand Russell

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

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

I Should Like To Believe My People's Religion, Which Was Just What I Could Wish, But Alas, It Is Impossible. I Have Really No Religion, For My God, Being A Spirit Shown Merely By Reason To Exist, His Properties Utterly Unknown, Is No Help To My Life. I Have Nor The Parson's Comfortable Doctrine That Every Good Action Has Its Reward, And Every Sin Is Forgiven. My Whole Religion Is This: Do Every Duty, And Expect No Reward For It, Either Here Or Hereafter.

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 Megalomaniac Differs From The Narcissist By The Fact That He Wishes To Be Powerful Rather Than Charming, And Seeks To Be Feared Rather Than Loved. To This Type Belong Many Lunatics And Most Of The Great Men Of History.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Civilized People Cannot Fully Satisfy Their Sexual Instinct Without Love.

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

A Happy Life Must Be To A Great Extent A Quiet Life, For It Is Only In An Atmosphere Of Quiet That True Joy Dare Live.

Philosophy Arises From An Unusually Obstinate Attempt To Arrive At Real Knowledge. What Passes For Knowledge In Ordinary Life Suffers From Three Defects: It Is Cocksure, Vague And Self-contradictory. The First Step Towards Philosophy Consists In Becoming Aware Of These Defects, Not In Order To Rest Content With A Lazy Scepticism, But In Order To Substitute An Amended Kind Of Knowledge Which Shall Be Tentative, Precise And Self-consistent.

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

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

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.

But As The Work Proceeded I Was Continually Reminded Of The Fable About The Elephant And The Tortoise. Having Constructed An Elephant Upon Which The Mathematical World Could Rest, I Found The Elephant Tottering, And Proceeded To Construct A Tortoise To Keep The Elephant From Falling. But The Tortoise Was Not More Secure Than The Elephant, And After Some Twenty Years Of Very Arduous Toil, I Came To The Conclusion That There Was Nothing More That I Could Do In The Way Of Making Mathematical Knowledge Indubitable.

The Evolution Of Our Spirit Is Blazed On The Dark Background Of Eternity By Our Individual Wakes. Every Person Can, If He/she Wishes, Leave A More Or Less Brilliant Wake Behind Them.

In Former Days, Men Sold Themselves To The Devil To Acquire Magical Powers. Nowadays They Acquire Those Powers From Science, And Find Themselves Compelled To Become Devils. There Is No Hope For The World Unless Power Can Be Tamed, And Brought Into The Service, Not Of This Or That Group Of Fanatical Tyrants, But Of The Whole Human Race, White And Yellow And Black, Fascist And Communist And Democrat; For Science Has Made It Inevitable That All Must Live Or All Must Die.

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

Positive Thinking

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.

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

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.

It Is Odd That Neither The Church Nor Modern Public Opinion Condemns Petting, Provided It Stops Short At A Certain Point. At What Point Sin Begins Is A Matter As To Which Casuists Differ. One Eminently Orthodox Catholic Divine Laid It Down That A Confessor May Fondle A Nun's Breasts, Provided He Does It Without Evil Intent. But I Doubt Whether Modern Authorities Would Agree With Him On This Point.

The Essence Of Education Is That It Is A Change Effected In The Organism To Satisfy The Operator.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Truth Is For The Gods; From Our Human Point Of View, It Is An Ideal, Towards Which We Can Approximate, But Which We Cannot Hope To Reach.

A Drop Of Water Is Not Immortal; It Can Be Resolved Into Oxygen And Hydrogen. If, Therefore, A Drop Of Water Were To Maintain That It Had A Quality Of Aqueousness Which Would Survive Its Dissolution We Should Be Inclined To Be Skeptical. In Like Manner We Know That The Brain Is Not Immortal.

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.

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

Drunkenness Is Temporary Suicide.

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.

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.

I Feel As If One Would Only Discover On One's Death Bed What One Ought To Have Lived For

The Sentiments Of An Adult Are Compounded Of A Kernel Of Instinct Surrounded By A Vast Husk Of Education.

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.

Reason May Be A Small Force, But It Is Constant, And Works Always In One Direction, While The Forces Of Unreason Destroy One Another In Futile Strife.

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

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

There Is No Reason To Suppose That The World Had A Beginning At All. The Idea That Things Must Have A Beginning Is Really Due To The Poverty Of Our Thoughts.

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

Politics Is Largely Governed By Sententious Platitudes Which Are Devoid Of Truth

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.

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

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.

In Human Relations One Should Penetrate To The Core Of Loneliness In Each Person And Speak To That.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Religions Which Have Any Very Strong Hold Over Men's Actions Have Generally Some Instinctive Basis.

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.

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.

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

There Are Two Motives For Reading A Book; One, That You Enjoy It; The Other, That You Can Boast About It.

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

The Wise Man Thinks About His Troubles Only When There Is Some Purpose In Doing So; At Other Times He Thinks About Other Things, Or, If It Is Night, About Nothing At All.

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. And He Will See That The Man Whose Mind Mirrors The World Becomes In A Sense As Great As The World. In Emancipation From The Fears That Beset The Slave Of Circumstance He Will Experience A Profound Joy, And Through All The Vicissitudes Of His Outward Life He Will Remain In The Depths Of His Being A Happy Man.

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.

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.

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.

We May Define "faith" As The Firm Belief In Something For Which There Is No Evidence. Where There Is Evidence, No One Speaks Of "faith." We Do Not Speak Of Faith That Two And Two Are Four Or That The Earth Is Round. We Only Speak Of Faith When We Wish To Substitute Emotion For Evidence. The Substitution Of Emotion For Evidence Is Apt To Lead To Strife, Since Different Groups, Substitute Different Emotions.

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.

Ever Since Men Became Capable Of Free Speculation, Their Actions, In Innumerable Important Respects, Have Depended Upon Their Theories As To The World And Human Life, As To What Is Good And What Is Evil. This Is True In The Present Day As At Any Former Time. To Understand An Age Or A Nation, We Must Understand Its Philosophy, And To Understand Its Philosophy We Must Ourselves Be In Some Degree Philosophers. There Is Here A Reciprocal Causation: The Circumstances Of Men S Lives Do Much To Determine Their Philosophy, But, Conversely, Their Philosophy Does Much To Determine Their Circumstances.

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.

There Is Much Pleasure To Be Gained From Useless Knowledge.

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.

To Think I Have Spent My Life On Absolute Muck.

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

In Democratic Countries, The Most Important Private Organizations Are Economic. Unlike Secret Societies, They Are Able To Exercise Their Terrorism Without Illegality, Since They Do Not Threaten To Kill Their Enemies, But Only To Starve Them.

Writing Can Be Either Readable Or Precise, But Not At The Same Time.

From The Height Of Their Disillusionment They Look Down Upon Those Whom They Despise As Simple Souls. For My Part I Have No Sympathy With This Outlook. All Disenchantment Is To Me A Malady, Which, It Is True, Certain Circumstances May Render Inevitable, But Which None The Less, When It Occurs, Is To Be Cured As Soon As Possible, Not To Be Regarded As A Higher Form Of Wisdom.

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.

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

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.

Our Use Of The Phrase 'the Dark Ages' To Cover The Period From 600 To 1000 Marks Our Undue Concentration On Western Europe. [...] From India To Spain, The Brilliant Civilisation Of Islam Flourished. What Was Lost To Christendom At This Time Was Not Lost To Civilisation, But Quite The Contrary. [...] To Us It Seems That West-european Civilisation Is Civilisation, But This Is A Narrow View.

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

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.

If Two Hitherto Rival Football Teams, Under The Influence Of Brotherly Love, Decided To Co-operate In Placing The Football First Beyond One Goal And Then Beyond The Other, No One's Happiness Would Be Increased

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.

Perhaps The Best Hope For The Future Of Mankind Is That Ways Will Be Found Of Increasing The Scope And Intensity Of Sympathy.

Science Is What We Know, And Philosophy Is What We Don't Know.

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.

It Is One Of The Defects Of Modern Higher Education That It Has Become Too Much A Training In The Acquisition Of Certain Kinds Of Skill, And Too Little An Enlargement Of The Mind And Heart By An Impartial Survey Of The World.

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

[freedom] Is The Greatest Of Political Goods. I Do Not Say Freedom Is The Greatest Of All Goods: The Best Things Come From Within They Are Such Things As Creative Art, And Love, And Thought. Such Things Can Be Helped Or Hindered By Political Conditions, But Not Actually Produced By Them; And Freedom Is, Both In Itself And In Its Relation To These Other Goods The Best Thing That Political And Economic Conditions Can Secure.

War Doesn't Determine Who's Right, It Determines Who's Left

I Hate The World And Almost All The People In It. I Hate The Labour Congress And The Journalists Who Send Men To Be Slaughtered, And The Fathers Who Feel A Smug Pride When Their Sons Are Killed, And Even The Pacifists Who Keep Saying Human Nature Is Essentially Good, In Spite Of All The Daily Proofs To The Contrary. I Hate The Planet And The Human Race—i Am Ashamed To Belong To Such A Species.

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

Certain Characteristics Of The Subject Are Clear. To Begin With, We Do Not In This Subject Deal With Particular Things Or Particular Properties: We Deal Formally With What Can Be Said About Any Thing Or Any Property. We Are Prepared To Say That One And One Are Two, But Not That Socrates And Plato Are Two.

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.

Unless You Assume A God, The Question Of Life's Purpose Is Meaningless.

Hitler Is An Outcome Of Rousseau.

Joy Of Life... Depends Upon A Certain Spontaneity In Regard To Sex. Where Sex Is Repressed, Only Work Remains, And A Gospel Of Work For Work's Sake Never Produced Any Work Worth Doing.

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

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

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

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.

I Do Not Think Any Reasonable Person Can Doubt That In India, China And Japan, If The Knowledge Of Birth Control Existed, The Birthrate Would Fall Very Rapidly

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.

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

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

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

Science Is No Substitute For Virtue; The Heart Is As Necessary For A Good Life As The Head.

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

The More We Realize Our Minuteness And Our Impotence In The Face Of Cosmic Forces, The More Amazing Becomes What Human Beings Have Achieved.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Whenever One Finds Oneself Inclined To Bitterness, It Is A Sign Of Emotional Failure.

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.

In His Youth, Wordsworth Sympathized With The French Revolution, Went To France, Wrote Good Poetry And Had A Natural Daughter. At This Period, He Was A Bad Man. Then He Became Good, Abandoned His Daughter, Adopted Correct Principles And Wrote Bad Poetry.

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

The Time Has Come, Or Is About To Come, When Only Large-scale Civil Disobedience, Which Should Be Nonviolent, Can Save The Populations From The Universal Death Which Their Governments Are Preparing For Them.

I Can't Tell Whether I Am Living In A Dream Or A Nightmare.

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.

Those Who In Principle Oppose Birth Control Are Either Incapable Of Arithmetic Or Else In Favour Of War, Pestilence And Famine As Permanent Features Of Human Life.

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

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

Scientific Societies Are As Yet In Their Infancy. It Is To Be Expected That Advances In Physiology And Psychology Will Give Governments Much More Control Over Individual Mentality Than They Now Have Even In Totalitarian Countries. Fitche Laid It Down That Education Should Aim At Destroying Free Will, So That, After Pupils Have Left School, They Shall Be Incapable, Throughout The Rest Of Their Lives, Of Thinking Or Acting Otherwise Than As Their Schoolmasters Would Have Wished.

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.

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

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.

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

A European Who Goes To New York And Chicago Sees The Future... When He Goes To Asia He Sees The Past.

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.

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.

We Are All Prone To The Malady Of The Introvert Who With The Manifold Spectacle Of The World Spread Out Before Him, Turns Away And Gazes Only Upon The Emptiness Within.

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.

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

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.

Grasshopper Always Wrong In Argument With Chicken.

It Is Clear That Thought Is Not Free If The Profession Of Certain Opinions Makes It Impossible To Earn A Living.

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

Every Increase In Knowledge Requires An Increase In Wisdom

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

... 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.

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

The Use Of Self Control Is Like The Use Of Brakes On Train. It Is Useful When You Find Yourself In Wrong Direction But Merely Harmful When The Direction Is Right

To Be Able To Fill Leisure Intelligently Is The Last Product Of Civilization, And At Present Very Few People Have Reached This Level.

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

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

An Educator Should Think Of A Child As A Gardener Thinks Of A Plant, As Something To Be Made To Grow By Having The Right Soil And The Right Amount Of Water. If Your Roses Fail To Bloom, It Does Not Occur To You To Whip Them, But You Try To Find Out What Has Been Amiss In Your Treatment Of Them. ... The Important Thing Is What The Children Do, And Not What They Do Not Do. And What They Do, If It Is To Have Value, Must Be A Spontaneous Expression Of Their Own Vital Energy.

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid.

Most People Believe In God Because They Have Been Taught From Early Infancy To Do It, And That Is The Main Reason. Then I Think That The Next Most Powerful Reason Is The Wish For Safety.

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

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.

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

Falling In Love

New Relationship

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

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.

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

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

A Man's Acts Are Partly Determined By Spontaneous Impulse, Partly By The Conscious And Unconscious Effects Of The Various Groups To Which He Belongs.

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.

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

Idealism And Realism

When You Are Studying Any Matter Or Considering Any Philosophy, Ask Yourself Only: What Are The Facts, And What Is The Truth That The Facts Bear Out. Never Let Yourself Be Diverted By What You Wish To Believe, But Look Only And Surely At What Are The Facts.

When Anaesthetics Were Invented They Were Thought To Be Wicked As Being An Attempt To Thwart God's Will. Insanity Was Thought To Be Due To Diabolic Possession, And It Was Believed That Demons Inhabiting A Madman Could Be Driven Out By Inflicting Pain Upon Him, And So Making Them Uncomfortable. In Pursuit Of This Opinion, Lunatics Were Treated For Years On End With Systematic And Conscientious Brutality.

To Expect A Personality To Survive The Disintegration Of The Brain Is Like Expecting A Cricket Club To Survive When All Of Its Members Are Dead.

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.

Whatever We Know Without Inference Is Mental.

I Am Looking Forward Very Much To Getting Back To Cambridge, And Being Able To Say What I Think And Not To Mean What I Say: Two Things Which At Home Are Impossible. Cambridge Is One Of The Few Places Where One Can Talk Unlimited Nonsense And Generalities Without Anyone Pulling One Up Or Confronting One With Them When One Says Just The Opposite The Next Day.

There Is No Difference Between Someone Who Eats Too Little And Sees Heaven And Someone Who Drinks Too Much And Sees Snakes.

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

Mathematical Logic

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.

Prophets, Mystics, Poets, Scientific Discoverers Are Men Whose Lives Are Dominated By A Vision; They Are Essentially Solitary Men . . . Whose Thoughts And Emotions Are Not Subject To The Dominion Of The Herd.

Patriots Always Talk Of Dying For Their Country And Never Of Killing For Their Country.

A Marriage Is Likely To Be Called Happy If Neither Party Ever Expected To Get Much Happiness Out Of It.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Mathematics Rightly Viewed Possesses Not Only Truth But Supreme Beauty.

Western Philosophy

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

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

Unhappy Business Men, I Am Convinced, Would Increase Their Happiness More By Walking Six Miles Every Day Than By Any Conceivable Change Of Philosophy.

I Am Not Myself In Any Degree Ashamed Of Having Changed My Opinions.

Power Is Sweet; It Is A Drug, The Desire For Which Increases With A Habit.

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

It Is Not My Prayer And Humility That You Cause Things To Go As You Wish, But By Acquiring A Knowledge Of Natural Laws.

I Say Quite Deliberately That The Christian Religion, As Organized In Its Churches, Has Been And Still Is The Principal Enemy Of Moral Progress In The World.

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

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

The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation.

In Astronomy, The Law Of Gravitation Is Plainly Better Worth Knowing Than The Position Of A Particular Planet On A Particular Night, Or Even On Every Night Throughout A Year. There Are In The Law A Splendour And Simplicity And Sense Of Mastery Which Illuminate A Mass Of Otherwise Uninteresting Details. But In History The Matter Is Far Otherwise. Historical Facts, Many Of Them, Have An Intrinsic Value, A Profound Interest On Their Own Account, Which Makes Them Worthy Of Study, Quite Apart From Any Possibility Of Linking Them Together By Means Of Causal Laws.

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

Self Confidence

None Of Our Beliefs Are Quite True; All Have At Least A Penumbra Of Vagueness And Error.

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.

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