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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.

-Bertrand Russell

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If The Ordinary Wage-earner

Bertrand Russell

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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.

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

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.

As Soon As We Abandon Our Own Reason, And Are Content To Rely Upon Authority, There Is No End To Our Troubles.

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

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.

Marriage Is For Women The Commonest Mode Of Livelihood, And The Total Amount Of Undesired Sex Endured By Women Is Probably Greater In Marriage Than In Prostitution.

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

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

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

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

It Is A Waste Of Energy To Be Angry With A Man Who Behaves Badly, Just As It Is To Be Angry With A Car That Won't Go.

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.

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

Fear Is The Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Have Gone Hand-in-hand. It Is Because Fear Is At The Basis Of Those Two Things. In This World We Can Now Begin A Little To Understand Things, And A Little To Master Them By The Help Of Science, Which Has Forced Its Way Step By Step Against The Christian Religion, Against The Churches, And Against The Opposition Of All The Old Precepts.

The Theoretical Understanding Of The World, Which Is The Aim Of Philosophy, Is Not A Matter Of Great Practical Importance To Animals, Or To Savages, Or Even To Most Civilised Men.

To Be Happy In This World, Especially When Youth Is Past, It Is Necessary To Feel Oneself Not Merely An Isolated Individual Whose Day Will Soon Be Over, But Part Of The Stream Of Life Flowing On From The First Germ To The Remote And Unknown Future.

As Soon As We Abandon Our Own Reason, And Are Content To Rely Upon Authority, There Is No End To Our Trouble. . . . No Catholic, For Instance, Takes Seriously The Text Which Says That A Bishop Should Be The Husband Of One Wife.

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.

A World Full Of Happiness Is Not Beyond Human Power To Create; The Obstacles Imposed By Inanimate Nature Are Not Insuperable. The Real Obstacles Lie In The Heart Of Man, And The Cure For These Is A Firm Hope, Informed And Fortified By Thought.

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

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We May Often Do As We Please - But We Cannot Please As We Please.

The Best Practical Advice I Can Give To The Present Generation Is To Practice The Virtue Which The Christians Call Love.

Indemnity For The Past And Security For The Future.

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

Do Not Feel Envious Of The Happiness Of Those Who Live In A Fool's Paradise, For Only A Fool Will Think That Is Happiness.

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.

Beware The Man Of The Single Book

Shakespeare . . . If He Does Not Give You Delight, You Had Better Ignore Him [if You Can].

Children, After Being Limbs Of Satan In Traditional Theology And Mystically Illuminated Angels In The Minds Of Educational Reformers, Have Reverted To Being Little Devils; Not Theological Demons Inspired By The Evil One, But Scientific Freudian Abominations Inspired By The Unconscious.

Order, Unity, And Continuity Are Human Inventions, Just As Truly As Catalogues And Encyclopedias.

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

To Avoid The Various Foolish Opinions To Which Mankind Are Prone, No Superhuman Genius Is Required. A Few Simple Rules Will Keep You, Not From All Error, But From Silly Error.

The Desire For Legitimate Offspring Is, In Fact, According To The Catholic Church, The Only Motive Which Can Justify Sexual Intercourse.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Method Of "postulating" What We Want Has Many Advantages; They Are The Same As The Advantages Of Theft Over Honest Toil.

The Process Of Philosophizing, To My Mind, Consists Mainly In Passing From Those Obvious, Vague, Ambiguous Things, That We Feel Quite Sure Of, To Something Precise, Clear, Definite, Which By Reflection And Analysis We Find Is Involved In The Vague Thing That We Start From, And Is, So To Speak, The Real Truth Of Which That Vague Thing Is A Sort Of Shadow.

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

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

Sir Arthur Eddington Deduces Religion From The Fact That Atoms Do Not Obey The Laws Of Mathematics. Sir James Jeans Deduces It From The Fact That They Do.

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You Could Take Up The Line That Some Of The Gnostics Took Up - A Line Which I Often Thought Was A Very Plausible One - That As A Matter Of Fact This World That We Know Was Made By The Devil At A Moment When God Was Not Looking. There Is A Good Deal To Be Said For That, And I Am Not Concerned To Refute It.

If We Were All Given By Magic The Power To Read Each Other's Thoughts, I Suppose The First Effect Would Be To Dissolve All Friendships.

Friendship Love

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

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When The Journey From Means To End Is Not Too Long, The Means Themselves Are Enjoyed If The End Is Ardently Desired.

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.

Adventurous Men Enjoy Shipwrecks, Mutinies, Earthquakes, Conflagrations, And All Kinds Of Unpleasant Experiences. They Say To Themselves, For Example, 'so This Is What An Earthquake Is Like,' And It Gives Them Pleasure To Have Their Knowledge Of The World Increased By This New Item.

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.

Mathematics Takes Us Into The Region Of Absolute Necessity, To Which Not Only The Actual Word, But Every Possible Word, Must Conform.

To The Primitive Mind, Everything Is Either Friendly Or Hostile; But Experience Has Shown That Friendliness And Hostility Are Not The Conceptions By Which The World Is To Be Understood.

... 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.

Although This May Seem A Paradox, All Exact Science Is Based On The Idea Of Approximation. If A Man Tells You He Knows A Thing Exactly, Then You Can Be Safe In Inferring That You Are Speaking To An Inexact Man.

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

You Could Live Without The Opera Singer, But Not Without The Services Of The Baker. On This Ground You Might Say That The Baker Performs A Greater Service; But No Lover Of Music Would Agree.

This, However, Is A Passing Nightmare; In Time The Earth Will Become Again Incapable Of Supporting Life, And Peace Will Return.

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.

The Immense Majority Of Intellectually Eminent Men Disbelieve In The Christian Religion, But They Conceal The Fact In Public, Because They Are Afraid Of Losing Their Incomes.

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.

The Average Man's Opinions Are Much Less Foolish Than They Would Be If He Thought For Himself.

Real Life Is, To Most Men, A Long Second Best, A Perpetual Compromise Between The Ideal And The Possible.

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

Most Political Leaders Acquire Their Position By Causing Large Numbers Of People To Believe That These Leaders Are Actuated By Altruistic Desires

Love Is A Slippery Eel That Bites Like Hell

The Most Valuable Things In Life Are Not Measured In Monetary Terms. The Really Important Things Are Not Houses And Lands, Stocks And Bonds, Automobiles And Real State, But Friendships, Trust, Confidence, Empathy, Mercy, Love And Faith.

If Everything Must Have A Cause, Then God Must Have A Cause. If There Can Be Anything Without A Cause, It May Just As Well Be The World As God, So That There Cannot Be Any Validity In That Argument... The Idea That Things Must Have A Beginning Is Really Due To The Poverty Of Our Imagination.

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

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

The Power Of Thought, The Vast Regions It Can Master.

Power Of Thought

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

Falling In Love

New Relationship

I Consider The Official Catholic Attitude On Divorce, Birth Control, And Censorship Exceedingly Dangerous To Mankind.

The Mind Is A Strange Machine Which Can Combine The Materials Offered To It In The Most Astonishing Ways.

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.

Envy ... Is One Form Of A Vice, Partly Moral, Partly Intellectual, Which Consists In Seeing Things Never In Themselves But Only In Their Relations.

Fundamental Happiness Depends More Than Anything Else Upon What May Be Called A Friendly Interest In Persons And Things.

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.

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

Even If It Is Indifferent To Human Desires, As It Seems To Be; If Human Life Is A Passing Episode, Hardly Noticeable In The Vastness Of Cosmic Processes; If There Is No Superhuman Purpose, And No Hope Of Ultimate Salvation, It Is Better To Know And Acknowledge This Truth Than To Endeavor, In Futile Self-assertion, To Order The Universe To Be What We Find Comfortable.

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.

Laughter Is The Most Inexpensive And Most Effective Wonder Drug. Laughter Is A Universal Medicine.

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.

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

I Wish To Propose For The Reader's Favourable Consideration A Doctrine Which May, I Fear, Appear Wildly Paradoxical And Subversive. The Doctrine In Question Is This: That It Is Undesirable To Believe A Proposition When There Is No Ground Whatever For Supposing It True.

Gradually, By Selective Breeding, The Congenital Differences Between Rulers And Ruled Will Increase Until They Become Almost Different Species. A Revolt Of The Plebs Would Become As Unthinkable As An Organized Insurrection Of Sheep Against The Practice Of Eating Mutton.

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

I Did Not, However, Commit Suicide, Because I Wished To Know More Of Mathematics.

People Who Are Vigorous And Brutal Often Find War Enjoyable.

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.

The Practice Of Inhibiting Impulses, Which Is To A Great Extent Necessary To Civilized Life, Makes Mistakes Easier, By Preventing Experience Of The Actions To Which A Desire Would Otherwise Lead, And By Often Causing The Inhibited Impulses Themselves To Be Unnoticed Or Quickly Forgotten.

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

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.

Science Seems To Be At War With Itself.... Naive Realism Leads To Physics, And Physics, If True, Shows Naive Realism To Be False. Therefore Naive Realism, If True, Is False; Therefore It Is False.

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.

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.

A Generation That Cannot Endure Boredom Will Be A Generation Of Little Men, Of Men Unduly Divorced From The Slow Process Of Nature, Of Men In Whom Every Vital Impulse Slowly Withers As Though They Were Cut Flowers In A Vase.

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

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

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

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

Christianity Offers Reasons For Not Fearing Death Or The Universe, And In So Doing It Fails To Teach Adequately The Virtue Of Courage.

Some `advanced Thinkers' Are Of The Opinion That Anyone Who Differs From The Conventional Opinion Must Be In The Right. This Is A Delusion; If It Were Not, Truth Would Be Easier To Come By Than It Is.

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

Positive Thinking

Indignation Is A Submission Of Our Thoughts, But Not Of Our Desires.

Righteous Indignation

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

The Saviors Of The World, Society's Last Hope.

We Have Almost Reached The Point Where Praise Of Rationality Is Held To Mark A Man As An Old Fogey Regrettably Surviving From A Bygone Age.

Too Little Liberty Brings Stagnation, And Too Much Brings Chaos.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

What Else Is There To Make Life Tolerable? We Stand On The Shore Of An Ocean, Crying To The Night And To Emptiness. Sometimes A Voice Of One Drowning, And In A Moment The Silence Returns. The World Seems To Me Quite Dreadful, The Unhappiness Of Many People Is Very Great, And I Often Wonder How They All Endure It. It Is Usually The Central Thing Around Which Their Lives Are Built, And I Suppose If They Did Not Live Most Of Their Lives In The Things Of The Moment, They Would Not Be Able To Go On.

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

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

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.

I Read Zuleika Dobson With Pleasure. It Represents The Oxford That The Two World Wars Have Destroyed With A Charm That Is Not Likely To Be Reproduced Anywhere In The World For The Next Thousand Years.

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

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

What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot Know.

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

Something Of The Hermit's Temper Is An Essential Element In Many Forms Of Excellence, Since It Enables Men To Resist The Lure Of Popularity, To Pursue Important Work In Spite Of General Indifference Or Hostility, And Arrive At Opinions Which Are Opposed To Prevalent Errors.

Against The Vast Majority Of My Countrymen, Even At This Moment, In The Name Of Humanity And Civilization, I Protest Against Our Share In The Destruction Of Germany. A Month Ago Europe Was A Peaceful Comity Of Nations; If An Englishman Killed A German, He Was Hanged. Now, If An Englishman Kills A German, Or If A German Kills An Englishman, He Is A Patriot, Who Has Deserved Well Of His Country.

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

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

...impregnation Will Be Regarded In An Entirely Different Manner, More In The Light Of A Surgical Operation, So That It Will Be Thought Not Ladylike To Have It Performed In The Natural Manner.

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.

I Do So Hate To Leave This World.

Love Is Something Far More Than Desire For Sexual Intercourse; It Is The Principal Means Of Escape From The Loneliness Which Afflicts Most Men And Women Throughout The Greater Part Of Their Lives.

Always Remember That True Happiness Is Not In Getting What You Want, But Wanting What You Already Have. He Who Dies With The Most Toys Is Still Dead. What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

Getting What You Want

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

Love Is Wise; Hatred Is Foolish. In This World, Which Is Getting More And More Closely Interconnected, We Have To Learn To Tolerate Each Other, We Have To Learn To Put Up With The Fact That Some People Say Things That We Don't Like. We Can Only Live Together In That Way. But If We Are To Live Together, And Not Die Together, We Must Learn A Kind Of Charity And A Kind Of Tolerance, Which Is Absolutely Vital To The Continuation Of Human Life On This Planet.

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

Is There Any Knowledge In The World Which Is So Certain That No Reasonable Man Could Doubt It?

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.

Owing To The Identification Of Religion With Virtue, Together With The Fact That The Most Religious Men Are Not The Most Intelligent, A Religious Education Gives Courage To The Stupid To Resist The Authority Of Educated Men, As Has Happened, For Example, Where The Teaching Of Evolution Has Been Made Illegal. So Far As I Can Remember, There Is Not One Word In The Gospels In Praise Of Intelligence; And In This Respect Ministers Of Religion Follow Gospel Authority More Closely Than In Some Others.

Man Is A Rational Animal—so At Least I Have Been Told. … Aristotle, So Far As I Know, Was The First Man To Proclaim Explicitly That Man Is A Rational Animal. His Reason For This View Was … That Some People Can Do Sums. … It Is In Virtue Of The Intellect That Man Is A Rational Animal. The Intellect Is Shown In Various Ways, But Most Emphatically By Mastery Of Arithmetic. The Greek System Of Numerals Was Very Bad, So That The Multiplication Table Was Quite Difficult, And Complicated Calculations Could Only Be Made By Very Clever People.

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

We Have In Fact, Two Kinds Of Morality, Side By Side: One Which We Preach, But Do Not Practice, And Another Which We Practice, But Seldom Preach.

Ethics And Morals

...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.

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.

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

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.

Many A Man Will Have The Courage To Die Gallantly, But Will Not Have The Courage To Say, Or Even To Think, That The Cause For Which He Is Asked To Die Is An Unworthy One.

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

Cynicism Such As One Finds Very Frequently Among The Most Highly Educated Young Men And Women Of The West, Results From The Combination Of Comfort And Powerlessness.

So In Everything: Power Lies With Those Who Control Finance, Not With Those Who Know The Matter Upon Which The Money Is To Be Spent. Thus, The Holders Of Power Are, In General, Ignorant And Malevolent, And The Less They Exercise Their Power The Better.

If Any Philosopher Had Been Asked For A Definition Of Infinity, He Might Have Produced Some Unintelligible Rigmarole, But He Would Certainly Not Have Been Able To Give A Definition That Had Any Meaning At All.

That Which Exists Through Itself Is Called The Eternal. The Eternal Has Neither Name Nor Shape. It Is The One Essence, The One Primal Spirit. Essence And Life Cannot Be Seen. They Are Contained In The Light Of Heaven. The Light Of Heaven Cannot Be Seen. It Is Contained In The Two Eyes.

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

The Great Majority Of Men And Women, In Ordinary Times, Pass Through Life Without Ever Contemplating Or Criticising, As A Whole, Either Their Own Conditions Or Those Of The World At Large.

Is A Man What He Seems To The Astronomer, A Tiny Lump Of Impure Carbon And Water Crawling Impotently On A Small And Unimportant Planet? Or Is He What He Appears To Hamlet? Is He Perhaps Both As Once?

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.

When One Admits That Nothing Is Certain One Must, I Think, Also Admit That Some Things Are Much More Nearly Certain Than Others. It Is Much More Nearly Certain That We Are Assembled Here Tonight Than It Is That This Or That Political Party Is In The Right. Certainly There Are Degrees Of Certainty, And One Should Be Very Careful To Emphasize That Fact, Because Otherwise One Is Landed In An Utter Skepticism, And Complete Skepticism Would, Of Course, Be Totally Barren And Completely Useless.

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.

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.

...the Nonexistence Of God Makes More Difference To Some Of Us Than To Others. To Me, It Means That There Is No Absolute Morality, That Moralities Are Sets Of Social Conventions Devised By Humans To Satisfy Their Needs.

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

One Must Expect A War Between U.s.a. And U.s.s.r. Which Will Begin With The Total Destruction Of London. I Think The War Will Last 30 Years, And Leave A World Without Civilised People, From Which Everything Will Have To Build Afresh - A Process Taking (say) 500 Years.

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

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.

When I Was 4 Years Old ... I Dreamt That I'd Been Eaten By A Wolf, And To My Great Surprise I Was In The Wolf's Stomach And Not In Heaven.

The Good Life Is One Inspired By Love And Guided By Knowledge.

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

Grasshopper Always Wrong In Argument With Chicken.

The Pleasure Of Work Is Open To Anyone Who Can Develop Some Specialised Skill, Provided That He Can Get Satisfaction From The Exercise Of His Skill Without Demanding Universal Applause.

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.

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.

The First Step In A Fascist Movement Is The Combination Under An Energetic Leader Of A Number Of Men Who Possess More Than The Average Share Of Leisure, Brutality, And Stupidity. The Next Step Is To Fascinate Fools And Muzzle The Intelligent, By Emotional Excitement On The One Hand And Terrorism On The Other.

Hell: A Place Where The Police Are German, The Motorists French And The Cooks English.

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

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

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.

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

Emphatic And Reiterated Assertion, Especially During Childhood, Produces In Most People A Belief So Firm As To Have A Hold Even Over The Unconscious.

The Demand For Certainty Is One Which Is Natural To Man, But Is Nevertheless An Intellectual Vice. So Long As Men Are Not Trained To Withhold Judgment In The Absence Of Evidence, They Will Be Led Astray By Cocksure Prophets, And It Is Likely That Their Leaders Will Be Either Ignorant Fanatics Or Dishonest Charlatans. To Endure Uncertainty Is Difficult, But So Are Most Of The Other Virtues.

If There Were In The World Today Any Large Number Of People Who Desired Their Own Happiness More Than They Desired The Unhappiness Of Others, We Could Have A Paradise In A Few Years.

No; We Have Been As Usual Asking The Wrong Question. It Does Not Matter A Hoot What The Mockingbird On The Chimney Is Singing. The Real And Proper Question Is: Why Is It Beautiful?

While Economics Is About How People Make Choice, Sociology Is About How They Don't Have Any Choice To Make.

We Need A Science To Save Us From Science.

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