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In The First Place A Philosophical Proposition Must Be General. It Must Not Deal Specially With Things On The Surface Of The Earth, Or Within The Solar System, Or With Any Other Portion Of Space And Time. . . . This Brings Us To A Second Characteristic Of Philosophical Propositions, Namely That They Must Be A Priori. A Philosophical Proposition Must Be Such As Can Neither Be Proved Nor Disproved By Empirical Evidence. . . . Philosophy, If What Has Been Said Is Correct, Becomes Indistinguishable From Logic As That Word Has Now Come To Be Used.

-Bertrand Russell

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In The First Place

Bertrand Russell

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In The First Place A Philosophical Proposition Must Be General. It Must Not Deal Specially With Things On The Surface Of The Earth, Or Within The Solar System, Or With Any Other Portion Of Space And Time. . . . This Brings Us To A Second Characteristic Of Philosophical Propositions, Namely That They Must Be A Priori. A Philosophical Proposition Must Be Such As Can Neither Be Proved Nor Disproved By Empirical Evidence. . . . Philosophy, If What Has Been Said Is Correct, Becomes Indistinguishable From Logic As That Word Has Now Come To Be Used.

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The Man Who Only Loves Beautiful Things Is Dreaming, Whereas The Man Who Knows Absolute Beauty Is Wide Awake.

Ideas And Principles That Do Harm Are As A Rule, Though Not Always, Cloaks For Evil Passions.

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

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.

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

I Have Been Merely Oppressed By The Weariness And Tedium And Vanity Of Things Lately: Nothing Stirs Me, Nothing Seems Worth Doing Or Worth Having Done: The Only Thing That I Strongly Feel Worth While Would Be To Murder As Many People As Possible So As To Diminish The Amount Of Consciousness In The World. These Times Have To Be Lived Through: There Is Nothing To Be Done With Them.

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.

Frege Has The Merit Of ... Finding A Third Assertion By Recognising The World Of Logic Which Is Neither Mental Nor Physical.

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.

What Has Human Happiness To Do With Morals? The Object Of Morals Is Not To Make People Happy.

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

No One Ever Gossips About The Virtues Of Others

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

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 M]oral Precepts That We Consider Really Important, Such As 'don't Pick Your Nose' Or 'don't Eat Peas With A Knife'. There May, For Ought I Know, Be Admirable Reasons For Eating Peas With A Knife, But . . . Early Persuasion Has Made Me Completely Incapable Of Appreciating Them.

Both In Thought And In Feeling, Even Though Time Be Real, To Realise The Unimportance Of Time Is The Gate Of Wisdom.

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

Humanistic Ethics Is Based On The Principle That Only Humans Themselves Can Determine The Criterion For Virtue And Not An Authority Transcending Us.

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.

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.

Is The Set Of All Sets Which Are Not Members Of Themselves A Member Of Itself?

A World Without Delight And Without Affection Is A World Destitute Of Value.

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

All Who Are Not Lunatics Are Agreed About Certain Things : That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead, Better To Be Adequately Fed Than Starved, Better To Be Free Than A Slave

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

Of These Austerer Virtues The Love Of Truth Is The Chief, And In Mathematics, More Than Elsewhere, The Love Of Truth May Find Encouragement For Waning Faith. Every Great Study Is Not Only An End In Itself, But Also A Means Of Creating And Sustaining A Lofty Habit Of Mind; And This Purpose Should Be Kept Always In View Throughout The Teaching And Learning Of Mathematics.

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.

Folly Is Perennial And Yet The Human Race Has Survived.

The Question Of "unreality"is A Very Important One. Misled By Grammar, The Great Majority Of Those Logicians Who Have Dealt With This Question Have Dealt With It On Mistaken Lines. They Have Regarded Grammatical Form As A Surer Guide In Analysis Than, In Fact, It Is. And They Have Not Known What Differences In Grammatical Form Are Important.

It Is Preoccupation With Possessions, More Than Anything Else, That Prevents Us From Living Freely And Nobly.

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.

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

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

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

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.

When The Intensity Of Emotional Conviction Subsides, A Man Who Is In The Habit Of Reasoning Will Search For Logical Grounds In Favour Of The Belief Which He Finds In Himself.

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

It May Seem To Your Conceited To Suppose That You Can Do Anything Important Toward Improving The Lot Of Mankind. But This Is A Fallacy. You Must Believe That You Can Help Bring About A Better World. A Good Society Is Produced Only By Good Individuals, Just As Truly As A Majority In A Presidential Election Is Produced By The Votes Of Single Electors. Everybody Can Do Something Toward Creating In His Own Environment Kindly Feelings Rather Than Anger, Reasonableness Rather Than Hysteria, Happiness Rather Than Misery.

Mankind Has Become So Much One Family That We Cannot Insure Our Own Prosperity Except By Insuring That Of Everyone Else.

Education, And The Life Of The Mind Generally, Is A Matter In Which Individual Initiative Is The Chief Thing Needed; The Function Of The State Should Begin And End With Insistence On Some Kind Of Education, And, If Possible, A Kind Which Promotes Mental Individualism, Not A Kind Which Happens To Conform To The Prejudices Of Government Officials.

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.

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.

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

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To Create A Healthy Philosophy You Should Renounce Metaphysics But Be A Good Mathematician.

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

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.

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Philosophy Is An Unusually Ingenious Attempt To Think Fallaciously.

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In Considering Irregular Appearances, There Are Certain Very Natural Mistakes Which Must Be Avoided.

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

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

I Do So Hate To Leave This World.

Almost All Education Has A Political Motive.

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.

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.

Collective Fear Stimulates Herd Instinct, And Tends To Produce Ferocity Toward Those Who Are Not Regarded As Members Of The Herd.

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

You Must Believe That You Can Help Bring About A Better World.

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.

I Once Saw A Photograph Of A Large Herd Of Wild Elephants In Central Africa Seeing An Airplane For The First Time, And All In A State Of Wild Collective Terror... As, However, There Were No Journalists Among Them, The Terror Died Down When The Airplane Was Out Of Sight.

Freedom Comes Only To Those Who No Longer Ask Of Life That It Shall Yield Them Any Of Those Personal Goods That Are Subject To The Mutations Of Time.

The First Effect Of Emancipation From The Church Was Not To Make Men Think Rationally, But To Open Their Minds To Every Sort Of Antique Nonsense

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

3 Is Prime, 5 Is Prime, 7 Is Prime, 9 Is A Paradox; As Is A Paradox Why The Number 1 Is Not Prime If It Has No Other Divisors Besides Himself.

Those Who Forget Good And Evil And Seek Only To Know The Facts Are More Likely To Achieve Good Than Those Who View The World Through The Distorting Medium Of Their Own Desires.

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

The Teacher, Like The Artist, The Philosopher, And The Man Of Letters, Can Only Perform His Work Adequately If He Feels Himself To Be An Individual Directed By An Inner Creative Impulse, Not Dominated And Fettered By An Outside Authority.

No Opinion Has Ever Been Too Errant To Become A Creed.

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.

If We Spent Half An Hour Every Day In Silent Immobility, I Am Convinced That We Should Conduct All Our Affairs, Personal, National, And International, Far More Sanely Than We Do At Present.

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

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.

As A Lover Of Truth, The National Propaganda Of All The Belligerent Nations Sickened Me. As A Lover Of Civilization, The Return To Barbarism Appalled Me.

There Is No Need To Worry About Mere Size. We Do Not Necessarily Respect A Fat Man More Than A Thin Man. Sir Isaac Newton Was Very Much Smaller Than A Hippopotamus, But We Do Not On That Account Value Him Less.

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

We Ought To Look The World Frankly In The Face.

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.

More Cranks Take Up Unfashionable Errors Than Unfashionable Truths.

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.

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

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

It Seems Clear To Me That Marriage Ought To Be Constituted By Children, And Relations Not Involving Children Ought To Be Ignored By The Law And Treated As Indifferent By Public Opinion. It Is Only Through Children That Relations Cease To Be A Purely Private Matter.

Clergymen Almost Necessarily Fail In Two Ways As Teachers Of Morals. They Condemn Acts Which Do No Harm And They Condone Acts Which Do Great Harm.

The Fact That All Mathematics Is Symbolic Logic Is One Of The Greatest Discoveries Of Our Age; And When This Fact Has Been Established, The Remainder Of The Principles Of Mathematics Consists Of The Analysis Of Symbolic Logic Itself.

Mathematical Logic

A Widespread Belief Is More Often Likely To Be Foolish Than Sensible.

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

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.

I Have Sought Love, First, Because It Brings Ecstasy – Ecstasy So Great That I Would Often Have Sacrificed All The Rest Of Life For A Few Hours Of That Joy. ... I Have Sought It, Finally, Because In The Union Of Love I Have Seen, In A Mystic Miniature, The Prefiguring Vision Of The Heaven That Saints And Poets Have Imagined.

Very Few Men Can Be Genuinely Happy In A Life Involving Continual Self-assertion Against The Skepticism Of The Mass Of Mankind, Unless They Can Shut Themselves Up In A Coterie And Forget The Cold Outer World. The Man Of Science Has No Need Of A Coterie, Since He Is Thought Well Of By Everybody Except His Colleagues. The Artist, On The Contrary, Is In The Painful Situation Of Having To Choose Between Being Despised And Being Despicable.

The True Spirit Of Delight, The Exaltation, The Sense Of Being More Than Man, Which Is The Touchstone Of The Highest Excellence, Is To Be Found In Mathematics As Surely As Poetry.

America... Where Law And Custom Alike Are Based Upon The Dreams Of Spinsters...

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

In A Balkan Country, Not So Many Years Ago, A Party Which Had Been Beaten By A Narrow Margin In A General Election Retrieved Its Fortunes By Shooting A Sufficient Number Of The Representatives Of The Other Side To Give It A Majority. . . . Cromwell And Robespierre . . . Acted Likewise.

All Movements Go Too Far.

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.

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.

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.

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

In A Logically Perfect Language, There Will Be One Word And No More For Every Simple Object, And Everything That Is Not Simple Will Be Expressed By A Combination Of Words, By A Combination Derived, Of Course, From The Words For The Simple Things That Enter In, One Word For Each Simple Component.

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.

We Must Be Sceptical Even Of Our Scepticism.

All's Well That Ends Well; Which Is The Epitaph I Should Put On My Tombstone If I Were The Last Man Left Alive.

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

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

One Of The Most Interesting And Harmful Delusions To Which Men And Nations Can Be Subjected Is That Of Imagining Themselves Special Instruments Of The Divine Will.

Life And Hope For The World Are To Be Found Only In The Deeds Of Love.

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.

One Should As A Rule Respect Public Opinion In So Far As Is Necessary To Avoid Starvation And To Keep Out Of Prison, But Anything That Goes Beyond This Is Voluntary Submission To An Unnecessary Tyranny.

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

It Is Because Modern Education Is So Seldom Inspired By A Great Hope That It So Seldom Achieves Great Results.

Orthodoxy Is The Grave Of Intelligence, No Matter What Orthodoxy It May Be.

Belief Systems Provide A Programme Which Relieves The Necessity Of Thought.

We Need A Science To Save Us From Science.

One Must Care About A World One Will Not See.

Ironclads And Maxim Guns Must Be The Ultimate Arbiters Of Metaphysical Truth.

Well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.

Education, Which Was At First Made Universal In Order That All Might Be Able To Read And Write, Has Been Found Capable Of Serving Quite Other Purposes. By Instilling Nonsense It Unifies Populations And Generates Collective Enthusiasm.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Think We Ought Always To Entertain Our Opinions With Some Measure Of Doubt. I Shouldn't Wish People Dogmatically To Believe Any Philosophy, Not Even Mine.

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.

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

All Who Are Not Lunatics Are Agreed About Certain Things. That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead, Better To Be Adequately Fed Than Starved, Better To Be Free Than A Slave. Many People Desire Those Things Only For Themselves And Their Friends; They Are Quite Content That Their Enemies Should Suffer. These People Can Only Be Refuted By Science: Humankind Has Become So Much One Family That We Cannot Ensure Our Own Prosperity Except By Ensuring That Of Everyone Else. If You Wish To Be Happy Yourself, You Must Resign Yourself To Seeing Others Also Happy.

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.

The Scientific Attitude Of Mind Involves A Sweeping Away Of All Other Desires In The Interest Of The Desire To Know.

Can A Society In Which Thought And Technique Are Scientific Persist For A Long Period, As, For Example, Ancient Egypt Persisted, Or Does It Necessarily Contain Within Itself Forces Which Must Bring Either Decay Or Explosion?

It Seems To Us Unwise To Have Insisted On Teaching Geometry To The Younger Dionysius, Tyrant Of Syracuse, In Order To Make Him A Good King, But From Plato's Point Of View It Was Essential. He Was Sufficiently Pythagorean To Think That Without Mathematics No True Wisdom Is Possible.

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

It Is Not By Delusion, However Exalted, That Mankind Can Prosper, But Only By Unswerving Courage In The Pursuit Of Truth.

If You Question Any Candid Person Who Is No Longer Young, He Is Very Likely To Tell You That, Having Tasted Life In This World, He Has No Wish To Begin Again As A "new Boy" In Another.

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

The Criminal Law Has, From The Point Of View Of Thwarted Virtue, The Merit Of Allowing An Outlet For Those Impulses Of Aggression Which Cowardice, Disguised As Morality, Restrains In Their More Spontaneous Forms. War Has The Same Merit. You Must Not Kill You Neighbor, Whom Perhaps You Genuinely Hate, But By A Little Propaganda This Hate Can Be Transferred To Some Foreign Nation, Against Whom All Your Murderous Impulses Become Patriotic Heroism.

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

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

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

Men Have Physical Needs, And They Have Emotions. While Physical Needs Are Unsatisfied, They Take First Place; But When They Are Satisfied, Emotions Unconnected With Them Become Important In Deciding Whether A Man Is To Be Happy Or Unhappy.

To Think I Have Spent My Life On Absolute Muck.

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.

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

The Very Best Proof That Something Can Be Done Is That Someone Has Already Done It.

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.

I Did Not Know I Loved You Until I Heard Myself Telling So, For One Instance I Thought, "good God, What Have I Said?" And Then I Knew It Was True.

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

Science May Set Limits To Knowledge, But Should Not Set Limits To Imagination.

While I Am As Convinced A Socialist As The Most Ardent Marxian, I Do Not Regard Socialism As A Gospel Of Proletarian Revenge, Nor Even, Primarily, As A Means Of Securing Economic Justice. I Regard It Primarily As An Adjustment To Machine Production Demanded By Considerations Of Common Sense, And Calculated To Increase The Happiness, Not Only Of Proletarians, But Of All Except A Tiny Minority Of The Human Race.

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

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

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.

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.

It Is Not What The Man Of Science Believes That Distinguishes Him, But How And Why He Believes It. His Beliefs Are Tentative, Not Dogmatic; They Are Based On Evidence, Not On Authority Or Intuition.

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.

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

One Of The Symptoms Of Approaching Nervous Breakdown Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important, And That To Take A Holiday Would Bring All Kinds Of Disaster. If I Were A Medical Man, I Should Prescribe A Holiday To Any Patient Who Considered His Or Her Work Important.

The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation.

Man Is A Rational Animal – So At Least I Have Been Told. Throughout A Long Life, I Have Looked Diligently For Evidence In Favour Of This Statement, But So Far I Have Not Had The Good Fortune To Come Across It, Though I Have Searched In Many Countries Spread Over Three Continents.

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.

When We Perceive Any Object Of A Familiar Kind, Much Of What Appears Subjectively To Be Immediately Given Is Really Derived From Past Experience.

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

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

Inferences Of Science And Common Sense Differ From Those Of Deductive Logic And Mathematics In A Very Important Respect, Namely, When The Premises Are True And The Reasoning Correct, The Conclusion Is Only Probable.

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

Democracy Has At Least One Merit, Namely That A Member Of Parliament Cannot Be Stupider Than His Constituents, For The More Stupid He Is, The More Stupid They Were To Elect Him.

Democracies Have

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

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

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

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

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

Find More Pleasure In Intelligent Dissent Than In Passive Agreement, For, If You Value Intelligence As You Should, The Former Implies A Deeper Agreement Than The Latter.

No Man Is Liberated From Fear Who Dare Not See His Place In The World As It Is; No Man Can Achieve The Greatness Of Which He Is Capable Until He Has Allowed Himself To See His Own Littleness.

Who Ever Heard A Theologian Preface His Creed, Or A Politician Conclude His Speech With An Estimate Of The Probable Error Of His Opinion?

There Will Still Be Things That Machines Cannot Do. They Will Not Produce Great Art Or Great Literature Or Great Philosophy; They Will Not Be Able To Discover The Secret Springs Of Happiness In The Human Heart; They Will Know Nothing Of Love And Friendship.

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

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.

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

Doubt And Certainty

As A Philosopher, If I Were Speaking To A Purely Philosophic Audience I Should Say That I Ought To Describe Myself As An Agnostic, Because I Do Not Think That There Is A Conclusive Argument By Which One Can Prove That There Is Not A God. On The Other Hand, If I Am To Convey The Right Impression To The Ordinary Man In The Street I Think That I Ought To Say That I Am An Atheist, Because, When I Say That I Cannot Prove That There Is Not A God, I Ought To Add Equally That I Cannot Prove That There Are Not The Homeric Gods.

To Like Many People Spontaneously And Without Effort Is Perhaps The Greatest Of All Sources Of Personal Happiness.

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

... The Whole World Of Loneliness, Poverty, And Pain Make A Mockery Of What Human Life Should Be.

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

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.

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

You Find This Curious Fact, That The More Intense Has Been The Religion Of Any Period And More Profound Has Been The Dogmatic Belief, The Greater Has Been The Cruelty And The Worse Has Been The State Of Affairs. In The So Called Age Of Faith, When Men Really Did Believe The Christian Religion In All Its Completeness, There Was The Inquisition, With Its Tortures; There Were Millions Of Unfortunate Women Burnt As Witches; And There Was Every Kind Of Cruelty Practised Upon All Sorts Of People In The Name Of Religion.

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

The Above Proposition Is Occasionally Useful.

The Supreme Maxim In Scientific Philosophising Is This: Wherever Possible, Logical Constructions Are To Be Substituted For Inferred Entities.

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.

Aristotle Maintained That Women Have Fewer Teeth Than Men; Although He Was Twice Married, It Never Occurred To Him To Verify This Statement By Examining His Wives' Mouths.

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

With Civilized Men..., It Is, I Think, Chiefly Love Of Excitement Which Makes The Populace Applaud When War Breaks Out; The Emotion Is Exactly The Same As At A Football Match, Although The Results Are Sometimes Somewhat More Serious.

Hatred Of Enemies Is Easier And More Intense Than Love Of Friends. But From Men Who Are More Anxious To Injure Opponents Than To Benefit The World At Large No Great Good Is To Be Expected.

The Governors Of The World Believe, And Have Always Believed, That Virtue Can Only Be Taught By Teaching Falsehood, And That Any Man Who Knew The Truth Would Be Wicked. I Disbelieve This, Absolutely And Entirely. I Believe That Love Of Truth Is The Basis Of All Real Virtue, And That Virtues Based Upon Lies Can Only Do Harm.

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little.

Happiness Is Not Best Achieved By Those Who Seek It Directly.

America Remained A Land Of Promise For Lovers Of Freedom. Even Byron, At A Moment When He Was Disgusted With Napoleon For Not Committing Suicide, Wrote An Eloquent Stanza In Praise Of Washington.

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