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

-Bertrand Russell

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In The Revolt Against

Bertrand Russell

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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.

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All The Important Human Advances That We Know Of Since Historical Times Began Have Been Due To Individuals Of Whom The Majority Faced Virulent Public Opposition.

To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

If You Had The Power To Destroy The World, Would You Do So?

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.

Protagoras Did Not Know If The Gods Exist, But He Held In Any Case They Ought To Be Worshiped. Philosophy, According To Him, Had Nothing Edifying To Teach, And For The Survival Of Morals We Must Rely Upon The Thoughtlessness Of The Majority And Their Willingness To Believe What They Had Been Taught.

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

You Find As You Look Around The World That Every Single Bit Of Progress In Humane Feeling, Every Improvement In The Criminal Law, Every Step Toward The Diminution Of War, Every Step Toward Better Treatment Of The Colored Races, Or Every Mitigation Of Slavery, Every Moral Progress That There Has Been In The World, Has Been Consistently Opposed By The Organized Churches Of The World. I Say Quite Deliberately That The Christian Religion, As Organized In Its Churches, Has Been And Still Is The Principle Enemy Of Moral Progress In The World.

Do Not Feel Certain Of Anything.

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

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.

In Detective Stories . . . I Alternately Identify Myself With The Murderer And The Huntsman-detective, But . . . There Are Those To Which This Vicarious Outlet Is Too Mild.

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

Almost Everything That Distinguishes The Modern World From Earlier Centuries Is Attributable To Science, Which Achieved Its Most Spectacular Triumphs In The Seventeenth Century.

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.

All The Time That He Can Spare From The Adornment Of His Person, He Devotes To The Neglect Of His Duties.

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

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

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.

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

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

The First Essential Character [of Civilization], I Should Say, Is Forethought. This, Indeed, Is What Mainly Distinguishes Men From Brutes And Adults From Children.

When A Man Tells You That He Knows The Exact Truth About Anything You Are Safe In Inferring That He Is An Inexact Man.

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

Ants And Savages Put Strangers To Death.

It Is Impossible To Read In America, Except On A Train, Because Of The Telephone. Everyone Has A Telephone, And It Rings All Day And Most Of The Night.

The Whole Of Theology, In Regard To Hell No Less Than To Heaven, Takes It For Granted That Man Is What Is Of Most Importance In The Universe Of Created Beings. Since All Theologians Are Men, This Postulate Has Met With Little Opposition.

There 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.

Democracy Is The Process By Which People Choose The Man Who'll Get The Blame.

The Moral Thing I Should Wish To Say To Them Is Very Simple; I Should Say: "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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The Discipline In Your Life Should Be One Determined By Your Own Desires And Your Own Needs, Not Put Upon You By Society Or Authority.

The Key To Happiness Is Accepting One Unpleasant Reality Every Day.

To Be Out Of Harmony With One's Surroundings Is Of Course A Misfortune, But It Is Not Always A Misfortune To Be Avoided At All Costs. Where The Environment Is Stupid Or Prejudiced Or Cruel, It Is A Sign Of Merit To Be Out Of Harmony With It.

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.

Philosophy Is An Unusually Ingenious Attempt To Think Fallaciously.

There Is No Greater Reason For Children To Honour Parents Than For Parents To Honour Children Except, That While The Children Are Young, The Parents Are Stronger Than Children.

Orthodoxy Is The Death Of Intelligence.

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

Hitler Is An Outcome Of Rousseau.

The Axiomatic Method Has Many Advantages Over Honest Work.

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.

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.

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

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

Be Isolated, Be Ignored, Be Attacked, Be In Doubt, Be Frightened, But Do Not Be Silenced.

I Hold All Knowledge That Is Concerned With Things That Actually Exist - All That Is Commonly Called Science - To Be Of Very Slight Value Compared To The Knowledge Which, Like Philosophy And Mathematics, Is Concerned With Ideal And Eternal Objects, And Is Freed From This Miserable World Which God Has Made.

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

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.

Every Increase In Knowledge Requires An Increase In Wisdom

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

Love Can Only Flourish As Long As It Is Free And Spontaneous; It Tends To Be Killed By The Thought That It Is A Duty. To Say That It Is Your Duty To Love So-and-so Is The Surest Way To Cause You To Hate Him Or Her.

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.

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

Grasshopper Always Wrong In Argument With Chicken.

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

It Is Only In Marriage With The World That Our Ideals Can Bear Fruit; Divorced From It, They Remain Barren.

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

I Am Allowed To Use Plain English Because Everybody Knows That I Could Use Mathematical Logic If I Chose.

Mathematical Logic

Either Man Will Abolish War, Or War Will Abolish Man.

Many Orthodox People Speak As Though It Were The Business Of Sceptics To Disprove Received Dogmas Rather Than Of Dogmatists To Prove Them. This Is, Of Course, A Mistake.

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.

Memory Demands An Image.

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

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

At The Age Of Eleven, I Began Euclid, With My Brother As My Tutor. ... I Had Not Imagined That There Was Anything So Delicious In The World. After I Had Learned The Fifth Proposition, My Brother Told Me That It Was Generally Considered Difficult, But I Had Found No Difficulty Whatsoever. This Was The First Time It Had Dawned On Me That I Might Have Some Intelligence.

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

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.

Punctuality Is A Quality The Need Of Which Is Bound Up With Social Co-operation. It Has Nothing To Do With The Relation Of The Soul To God, Or With Mystic Insight, Or With Any Of The Matters With Which The More Elevated And Spiritual Moralists Are Concerned.

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

To Acquire Immunity To Eloquence Is Of The Utmost Importance To The Citizens Of A Democracy.

The Experience Of Overcoming Fear Is Extraordinarily Delightful.

Overcoming Fear

A Great Many Worries Can Be Diminished By Realizing The Unimportance Of The Matter Which Is Causing Anxiety.

Diet, Injections, And Injunctions Will Combine, From A Very Early Age, To Produce The Sort Of Character And The Sort Of Beliefs That The Authorities Consider Desirable, And Any Serious Criticism Of The Powers That Be Will Become Psychologically Impossible. Even If All Are Miserable, All Will Believe Themselves Happy, Because The Government Will Tell Them That They Are So.

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

Artists Are On The Average Less Happy Than Men Of Science.

While The Dogmatist Is Harmful, The Sceptic Is Useless ...; One Is Certain Of Knowing, The Other Of Not Knowing. What Philosophy Should Dissipate Is Certainty, Whether Of Knowledge Or Of Ignorance. Knowledge Is Not So Precise A Concept As Is Commonly Thought. Instead Of Saying 'i Know This', We Ought To Say 'i More Or Less Know Something More Or Less Like This'. ... Knowledge In Practical Affairs Has Not The Certainty Or The Precision Of Arithmetic.

One Of The Most Powerful Of All Our Passions Is The Desire To Be Admired And Respected.

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.

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

To Choose One Sock From Each Of Infinitely Many Pairs Of Socks Requires The Axiom Of Choice, But For Shoes The Axiom Is Not Needed.

The Point Of Philosophy Is To Start With Something So Simple As Not To Seem Worth Stating, And To End With Something So Paradoxical That No One Will Believe It.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

To A Mind Of Sufficient Intellectual Power, The Whole Of Mathematics Would Appear Trivial, As Trivial As The Statement That A Four-footed Animal Is An Animal.

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.

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.

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

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.

Tobacco . . . Is Not Prohibited In The Scriptures, Though, As Samuel Butler Points Out, St. Paul Would No Doubt Have Denounced It If He Had Known Of It.

The Human Race May Well Become Extinct Before The End Of The Century. Speaking As A Mathematician, I Should Say The Odds Are About Three To One Against Survival.

There Is An Element Of The Busybody In Our Conception Of Virtue: Unless A Man Makes Himself A Nuisance To A Great Many People, We Do Not Think He Can Be An Exceptionally Good Man.

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

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.

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.

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

Since Adam And Eve Ate The Apple, Man Has Never Refrained From Any Folly Of Which He Was Capable.

Without Effort And Change, Human Life Cannot Remain Good. It Is Not A Finished Utopia That We Ought To Desire, But A World Where Imagination And Hope Are Alive And Active.

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 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.

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.

Fear Is The Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Go Hand In Hand.

When Benjamin Franklin Invented The Lightning-rod, The Clergy, Both In England And America, With Enthusiastic Support Of George Iii, Condemned It As An Impious Attempt To Defeat The Will Of God.

England And America

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.

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

A Man Without A Bias Cannot Write Interesting History - If Indeed Such A Man Exists.

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.

An Extra-terrestrial Philosopher, Who Had Watched A Single Youth Up To The Age Of Twenty-one And Had Never Come Across Any Other Human Being, Might Conclude That It Is The Nature Of Human Beings To Grow Continually Taller And Wiser In An Indefinite Progress Towards Perfection; And This Generalization Would Be Just As Well Founded As The Generalization Which Evolutionists Base Upon The Previous History Of This Planet.

Ordinary Language Is Totally Unsuited For Expressing What Physics Really Asserts, Since The Words Of Everyday Life Are Not Sufficiently Abstract. Only Mathematics And Mathematical Logic Can Say As Little As The Physicist Means To Say.

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

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.

Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habit. Thought Is Great And Swift And Free.

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

If The Youth Is Content To Abandon His Previous Associates And To Throw In His Lot Whole-heartedly With The Rulers, He May, After Suitable Tests, Be Promoted, But If He Shows Any Regrettable Solidarity With His Previous Associates, The Rulers Will Reluctantly Conclude That There Is Nothing To Be Done With Him Except To Send Him To The Lethal Chamber Before His Ill-disciplined Intelligence Has Had Time To Spread Revolt. This Will Be A Painful Duty To The Rulers, But I Think They Will Not Shrink From Performing It.

I Believe Four Ingredients Are Necessary For Happiness: Health, Warm Personal Relations, Sufficient Means To Keep You From Want, And Successful Work.

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

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.

To Fear Love Is To Fear Life, And Those Who Fear Life Are Already Three Parts Dead.

[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.

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.

The Fact That A Belief Has A Good Moral Effect Upon A Man Is No Evidence Whatsoever In Favor Of Its Truth. I'm Not Contending In A Dogmatic Way That There Is Not A God. What I'm Contending Is That We Don't Know That There Is. I Don't Like The Word "absolute." I Don't Think There Is Anything Absolute Whatever. The Moral Law, For Example, Is Always Changing. At One Period In The Development Of The Human Race, Almost Everybody Thought Cannibalism Was A Duty.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 Any Closet, You Can Find It, If It Is Too Small, Or Out Of Style, Or There Is Just One Of It Where There Should Be Two

My Conclusion Is That There Is No Reason To Believe Any Of The Dogmas Of Traditional Theology And, Further, That There Is No Reason To Wish That They Were True. Man, In So Far As He Is Not Subject To Natural Forces, Is Free To Work Out His Own Destiny. The Responsibility Is His, And So Is The Opportunity.

My Own View On Religion Is . . . It Helped In Early Days To Fix The Calendar, And . . . To Chronicle Eclipses . . . These Two Services I Am Prepared To Acknowledge.

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

The Legacy Of Greece To Western Philosophy Is Western Philosophy.

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

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

I Often Long To . . . Give Up My Life To Love Of My Neighbour. This Is Really A Temptation.

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

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

My First Advice (on How Not To Grow Old) Would Be To Choose You Ancestors Carefully.

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

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

My Whole Religion Is This: Do Every Duty, And Expect No Reward For It, Either Here Or Hereafter.

I Cannot Escape From The Conclusion That The Great Ages Of Progress Have Depended Upon A Small Number Of Individuals Of Transcendent Ability.

History Is Valuable, To Begin With, Because It Is True; And This, Though Not The Whole Of Its Value, Is The Foundation And Condition Of All The Rest. That All Knowledge, As Such, Is In Some Degree Good, Would Appear To Be At Least Probable; And The Knowledge Of Every Historical Fact Possesses This Element Of Goodness, Even If It Posses No Other.

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.

I Believe That Communism Is Necessary To The World, And I Believe That The Heroism Of Russia Has Fired Men's Hopes In A Way Which Was Essential To The Realization Of Communism In The Future. Regarded As A Splendid Attempt, Without Which Ultimate Success Would Have Been Very Improbable, Bolshevism Deserves The Gratitude And Admiration Of All The Progressive Part Of Mankind.

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.

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

The Opinions That Are Held With Passion Are Always Those For Which No Good Ground Exists; Indeed The Passion Is The Measure Of The Holders Lack Of Rational Conviction. Opinions In Politics And Religion Are Almost Always Held Passionately.

Critical Thinking

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.

No One Gossips About Other People's Secret Virtues.

Keeping Secrets

Everything Is Vague To A Degree You Do Not Realize Till You Have Tried To Make It Precise.

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.

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

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

When I Say That Children Should Be Told About Sex, I Do Not Mean That They Should Be Told Only The Bare Physiological Facts; They Should Be Told Whatever They Wish To Know. There Should Be No Attempt To Represent Adults As More Virtuous Than They Are, Or Sex As Occurring Only In Marriage. There Is No Excuse For Deceiving Children. And When, As Must Happen In Conventional Families, They Find That Their Parents Have Lied, They Lose Confidence In Them, And Feel Justified In Lying To Them.

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.

There Was A Law In Connecticut - I Believe It Is Still Formally Unrepealed - Making It Illegal For A Man To Kiss His Wife On Sunday.

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.

Good Nature Is, Of All Moral Qualities, The One That The World Needs Most, And Good Nature Is The Result Of Ease And Security, Not Of A Life Of Arduous Struggle. Modern Methods Of Production Have Given Us The Possibility Of Ease And Security For All; We Have Chosen, Instead, To Have Overwork For Some And Starvation For The Others. Hitherto We Have Continued To Be As Energetic As We Were Before There Were Machines; In This We Have Been Foolish, But There Is No Reason To Go On Being Foolish For Ever.

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

The Secret To Happiness Is To Face The Fact That The World Is Horrible.

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

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.

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.

I Had Supposed Until That Time That It Was Quite Common For Parents To Love Their Children, But The War Persuaded Me That It Is A Rare Exception. I Had Supposed That Most People Liked Money Better Than Almost Anything Else, But I Discovered That They Liked Destruction Even Better. I Had Supposed That Intellectuals Frequently Loved Truth, But I Found Here Again That Not Ten Per Cent Of Them Prefer Truth To Popularity.

No Great Achievement Is Possible Without Persistent Work.

The Dictum That Human Nature Cannot Be Changed Is One Of Those Tiresome Platitudes That Conceal From The Ignorant The Depths Of Their Own Ignorance.

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.

It Is In The Nature Of Imperialism That Citizens Of The Imperial Power Are Always Among The Last To Know-or Care-about Circumstances In The Colonies.

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

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.

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.

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

...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.

Mystery Is Delightful, But Unscientific, Since It Depends Upon Ignorance.

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

Look At Me. Look At Me Is One Of The Fundamental Desires Of Human Heart.

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 Road To Happiness And Prosperity Lies In An Organized Diminution Of Work.

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

Half The Useful Work In The World Consists Of Combating The Harmful Work.

I Used Often To Go To America During Prohibition, And There Was Far More Drunkenness There Then Than Before; The Prohibition Of Pornography Has Much The Same Effect.

If You Think Your Belief Is Based Upon Reason, You Will Support It By Argument Rather Than By Persecution, And Will Abandon It If The Argument Goes Against You. But If Your Belief Is Based Upon Faith, You Will Realize That Argument Is Useless, And Will Therefore Resort To Force Either In The Form Of Persecution Or By Stunting Or Distorting The Minds Of The Young In What Is Called 'education.'

St. Paul Introduced An Entirely Novel View Of Marriage, That It Existed Primarily To Prevent The Sin Of Fornication. It Is Just As If One Were To Maintain That The Sole Reason For Baking Bread Is To Prevent People From Stealing Cake.

Very Many People Spend Money In Ways Quite Different From Those That Their Natural Tastes Would Enjoin, Merely Because The Respect Of Their Neighbors Depends Upon Their Possession Of A Good Car And Their Ability To Give Good Dinners. As A Matter Of Fact, Any Man Who Can Obviously Afford A Car But Genuinely Prefers Travels Or A Good Library Will In The End Be Much More Respected Than If He Behaved Exactly Like Everyone Else.

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.

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