Background Image

...

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.

-Bertrand Russell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

It Seems Clear To

Bertrand Russell

...

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.

Views: 10

Topic

More From Bertrand Russell

Admit At Least One Painful Truth To Yourself Every Day. Teach Yourself To Feel That Life Would Still Be Worth Living Even If You Were Not Immeasurably Superior To All Your Friends. Exercises Of This Sort, Prolonged Through Several Years, Will At Last Enable You To Admit Facts Without Flinching, And Will, In So Doing, Free You From The Empire Of Fear Over A Very Large Field.

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

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.

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

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

Americans And Englishmen, When They Become Acquainted With The Balkans, Feel An Astonished Contempt When They Study The Mutual Enmities Of Bulgarians And Serbs, Of Hungarians And Rumanians. It Is Evident To Them That These Enmities Are Absurd And That The Belief Of Each Little Nation In Its Own Superiority Has No Objective Basis. But Most Of Them Are Quite Unable To See That The National Pride Of A Great Power Is Essentially As Unjustifiable As That Of A Little Balkan Country.

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

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

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 Three Main Extra-rational Activities In Modern Life Are Religion, War, And Love. All These Are Extra-rational, But Love Is Not Anti-rational, That Is To Say, A Reasonable Man May Reasonably Rejoice In Its Existence

For Over Two Thousand Years It Has Been The Custom Among Earnest Moralists To Decry Happiness As Something Degraded And Unworthy

The Legacy Of Greece To Western Philosophy Is Western Philosophy.

Altogether It Will Be Found That A Quiet Life Is Characteristic Of Great Men, And That Their Pleasures Have Not Been Of The Sort That Would Look Exciting To The Outward Eye.

Bad Philosophers May Have A Certain Influence; Good Philosophers, Never.

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

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.

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.

No People Anywhere In The World Would Accept Being Expelled En Masse From Their Own Country; How Can Anyone Require The People Of Palestine To Accept A Punishment Which Nobody Else Would Tolerate?

The Commonest Objection To Birth Control Is That It Is Against Nature.

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

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.

Science Does Not Aim At Establishing Immutable Truths And Eternal Dogmas; Its Aim Is To Approach The Truth By Successive Approximations, Without Claiming That At Any Stage Final And Complete Accuracy Has Been Achieved.

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

The Rules Of Logic Are To Mathematics What Those Of Structure Are To Architecture.

Life Is Just One Cup Of Coffee After Another, And Don't Look For Anything Else.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Bacon Not Only Despised The Syllogism, But Undervalued Mathematics, Presumably As Insufficiently Experimental. He Was Virulently Hostile To Aristotle , But He Thought Very Highly Of Democritus , Although He Did Not Deny That The Course Of Nature Exemplifies A Divine Purpose, He Objected To Any Admixture Of Teleological Explanation In The Actual Investigation Of Phenomena; Everything, He Held, Should Be Explained As Following Necessarily From Efficient Causes .

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.

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

There Is An Artist Imprisoned In Each One Of Us. Let Him Loose To Spread Joy Everywhere.

I Find It So Difficult Not To Hate, When I Do Not Hate I Feel We Few Are So Lonely In The World

A Stupid Man's Report Of What A Clever Man Says Can Never Be Accurate, Because He Unconsciously Translates What He Hears Into Something He Can Understand.

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.

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

For A Good Notation Has A Subtlety And Suggestiveness Which At Times Make It Seem Almost Like A Live Teacher.

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.

Vanity Is A Motive Of Immense Potency.

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.

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

When Two Men Of Science Disagree, They Do Not Invoke The Secular Arm; They Wait For Further Evidence To Decide The Issue, Because, As Men Of Science, They Know That Neither Is Infallible. But When Two Theologians Differ, Since There Is No Criteria To Which Either Can Appeal, There Is Nothing For It But Mutual Hatred And An Open Or Covert Appeal To Force.

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?

European Travellers Find The Japanese A Smiling Race.

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

[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.

Religions That Teach Brotherly Love Have Been Used As An Excuse For Persecution, And Our Profoundest Scientific Insight Is Made Into A Means Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

Ethical Metaphysics Is Fundamentally An Attempt, However Disguised, To Give Legislative Force To Our Own Wishes.

I Have Found, For Example, That If I Have To Write Upon Sum Rather Difficult Topic, The Best Plan Is To Think About It With Very Great Intensity-the Greatest Intensity Of Which I Am Capable-for A Few Hours Or Days, And At The End Of That Time Give Orders, So To Speak (to My Subconscious Mind) That The Work Is To Proceed Underground. After Some Months I Return Consciously To The Topic And Find That The Work Has Been Done.

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.

The Fact That An Opinion Has Been Widely Held Is No Evidence Whatever That It Is Not Utterly Absurd; Indeed In View Of The Silliness Of The Majority Of Mankind, A Widely Spread Belief Is More Likely To Be Foolish Than Sensible.

There Is... In Our Day, A Powerful Antidote To Nonsense, Which Hardly Existed In Earlier Times - I Mean Science. Science Cannot Be Ignored Or Rejected, Because It Is Bound Up With Modern Technique; It Is Essential Alike To Prosperity In Peace And To Victory In War. That Is, Perhaps From An Intellectual Point Of View, The Most Hopeful Feature Of Our Age, And The One Which Makes It Most Likely That We Shall Escape Complete Submersion In Some New Or Old Superstition.

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.

In Spreading His Ideas, Plato Was Willing To Employ Emotional Appeals, State Propaganda, And The Use Of Force.

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.

What Is Matter? Never Mind.

Philosophy, Though Unable To Tell Us With Certainty What Is The True Answer To The Doubts Which It Raises, Is Able To Suggest Many Possiblities Which Enlarge Our Thoughts And Free Them From The Tyranny Of Custom. Thus, While Diminishing Our Feeling Of Certainty As To What Things Are, It Greatly Increases Our Knowledge As To What The May Be; It Removes The Somewhat Arrogant Dogmatism Of Those Who Have Never Travelled Into The Region Of Liberating Doubt, And It Keeps Alive Our Sense Of Wonder By Showing Familar Things In An Unfamilar Aspect

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

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do. [...] The Most Savage Controversies Are Those About Matters As To Which There Is No Good Evidence Either Way. Persecution Is Used In Theology, Not In Arithmetic, Because In Arithmetic There Is Knowledge, But In Theology There Is Only Opinion. So Whenever You Find Yourself Getting Angry About A Difference Of Opinion, Be On Your Guard; You Will Probably Find, On Examination, That Your Belief Is Going Beyond What The Evidence Warrants.

Finding Yourself

For Some Reason Which I Have Failed To Understand, Many People Like The System [scientific Totalitarianism] When It Is Russian But Disliked The Very Same System When It Was German. I Am Compelled To Think That This Is Due To The Power Of Labels; These People Like Whatever Is Labelled ‘left’ Without Examining Whether The Label Has Any Justification.

Religion And Science Are Two Aspects Of Social Life, Of Which The Former Has Been Important As Far Back As We Know Anything Of Man

When The State Intervenes To Insure The Indoctrination Of Some Doctrine, It Does So Because There Is No Conclusive Evidence In Favor Of That Doctrine.

The First Dogma Which I Came To Disbelieve Was That Of Free Will. It Seemed To Me That All Notions Of Matter Were Determined By The Laws Of Dynamics And Could Not Therefore Be Influenced By Human Wills.

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.

There Are Three Ways Of Securing A Society That Shall Be Stable As Regards Population. The First Is That Of Birth Control, The Second That Of Infanticide Or Really Destructive Wars, And The Third That Of General Misery Except For A Powerful Minority.

Dogma Demands Authority, Rather Than Intelligent Thought, As The Source Of Opinion; It Requires Persecution Of Heretics And Hostility To Unbelievers; It Asks Of Its Disciples That They Should Inhibit Natural Kindliness In Favor Of Systematic Hatred.

Machines Are Worshipped Because They Are Beautiful And Valued Because They Confer Power; They Are Hated Because They Are Hideous And Loathed Because They Impose Slavery.

Opinions Which Justify Cruelty Are Inspired By Cruel Impulses.

Calculus Required Continuity, And Continuity Was Supposed To Require The Infinitely Little; But Nobody Could Discover What The Infinitely Little Might Be.

I Suppose The Advocates Of Unreason Think That There Is A Better Chance Of Profitably Deceiving The Populace If They Keep It In A State Of Effervescence.

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.

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. Although This Science Will Be Diligently Studied, It Will Be Rigidly Confined To The Governing Class. The Populace Will Not Be Allowed To Know How Its Convictions Are Generated.

World Government

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

Physics Is Mathematical Not Because We Know So Much About The Physical World, But Because We Know So Little; It Is Only Its Mathematical Properties That We Can Discover.

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

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

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

Christ . . . Said That A Man Who Had Looked After A Woman Lustfully Had Sinned As Much As The Man Who Had Seduced Her. How Absurd!

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

Another Merit Of Home Is That It Preserves The Diversity Between Individuals. If We Were All Alike, It Might Be Convenient For The Bureaucrat And The Statistician, But It Would Be Very Dull, And Would Lead To A Very Unprogressive Society.

Every Increase In Knowledge Requires An Increase In Wisdom

The Morality Of Work Is The Morality Of Slaves, And The Modern World Has No Need Of Slavery.

A Physicist Looks For Causes; That Does Not Necessarily Imply That There Are Causes Everywhere. A Man May Look For Gold Without Assuming That There Is Gold Everywhere; If He Finds Gold, Well And Good, If He Doesn't He's Had Bad Luck. The Same Is True When The Physicists Look For Causes.

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.

Man Needs, For His Happiness, Not Only The Enjoyment Of This Or That, But Hope And Enterprise And Change.

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

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

If The Ordinary Wage-earner Worked Four Hours A Day, There Would Be Enough For Everybody, And No Unemployment — Assuming A Certain Very Moderate Amount Of Sensible Organization. This Idea Shocks The Well-to-do, Because They Are Convinced That The Poor Would Not Know How To Use So Much Leisure.

We Are Told That Sin Consists In Acting Contrary To God's Commands, But We Are Also Told That God Is Omnipotent. If He Is, Nothing Contrary To His Will Can Occur; Therefore When The Sinner Disobeys His Commands, He Must Have Intended This To Happen.

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

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

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

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.

It's Not What You Have Lost, But What You Have Left That Counts.

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.

Of All Evils Of War The Greatest Is The Purely Spiritual Evil: The Hatred, The Injustice, The Repudiation Of Truth, The Artificial Conflict.

Every Great Idea Starts Out As A Blasphemy.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Need A Science To Save Us From Science.

There Are Still Many People In America Who Regard Depressions As Acts Of God. I Think Keynes Proved That The Responsibility For These Occurrences Does Not Rest With Providence.

Man Has Existed For About A Million Years. He Has Possessed Writing For About 6,000 Years, Agriculture Somewhat Longer, But Perhaps Not Much Longer. Science, As A Dominant Factor In Determining The Belief Of Educated Men, Has Existed For About 300 Years; As A Source Of Economic Technique, For About 150 Years. In This Brief Period It Has Proved Itself An Incredibly Powerful Revolutionary Force. When We Consider How Recently It Has Risen To Power, We Find Ourselves Forced To Believe That We Are At The Very Beginning Of Its Work In Transforming Human Life.

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

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

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

One Of The Painful Things About Our Time Is That Those Who Feel Certainty Are Stupid, And Those With Any Imagination And Understanding Are Filled With Doubt And Indecision.

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

I Think That There Is Far Too Much Work Done In The World, That Immense Harm Is Caused By The Belief That Work Is Virtuous, And That What Needs To Be Preached In Modern Industrial Countries Is Quite Different From What Always Has Been Preached.

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

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.

So Long As There Is Death There Will Be Sorrow, And So Long As There Is Sorrow It Can Be No Part Of The Duty Of Human Beings To Increase Its Amount, In Spite Of The Fact That A Few Rare Spirits Know How To Transmute It.

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

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

The Military Superiority Of Europe To Asia Is Not An Eternal Law Of Nature, As We Are Tempted To Think, And Our Superiority In Civilization Is A Mere Delusion.

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

We Are Told That Sin Consists In Acting Contrary To God's Commands, But We Are Also Told That God Is Omnipotent. . . . This Leads To Frightful Results. . . . The British State Considers It The Duty Of An Englishman To Kill People Who Are Not English Whenever A Collection Of Elderly Gentlemen In Westminster Tells Him To Do So. . . . Church And State Are Placable Enemies Of Both Intelligence And Virtue.

Grasshopper Always Wrong In Argument With Chicken.

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.

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.

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

We Must Be Sceptical Even Of Our Scepticism.

Affection Cannot Be Created; It Can Only Be Liberated.

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.

It Is Only Theory That Makes Men Completely Incautious.

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

One Of The Symptoms Of An Approaching Nervous Breakdown Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important.

The Sea, The Stars, The Night Wind In Waste Places, Mean More To Me Than Even The Human Beings I Love Best.

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

The Ten Commandments Should Be Headed Like An Examination Paper: No More Than Six To Be Attempted.

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

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subconsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do.

Italy, And The Spring And First Love All Together Should Suffice To Make The Gloomiest Person Happy.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Analytic It Is Clear That The Definition Of "logic" Or "mathematics" Must Be Sought By Trying To Give A New Definition Of The Old Notion Of "analytic" Propositions.

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

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

Aristotle, In Spite Of His Reputation, Is Full Of Absurdities. He Says That Children Should Be Conceived In The Winter, When The Wind Is In The North, And That If People Marry Too Young The Children Will Be Female. He Tells Us That The Blood Of Females Is Blacker Than That Of Males; That The Pig Is The Only Animal Liable To Measles; That An Elephant Suffering From Insomnia Should Have Its Shoulders Rubbed With Salt, Olive-oil, And Warm Water; That Women Have Fewer Teeth Than Men, And So On. Nevertheless, He Is Considered By The Great Majority Of Philosophers A Paragon Of Wisdom.

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.

Science, By Itself Cannot, Supply Us With An Ethic.

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

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

Among The Tibetans, One Wife Has Many Husbands, Because Men Are Too Poor To Support A Whole Wife.

Faith: A Firm Belief For Which There Is No Evidence.

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

Next To Enjoying Ourselves, The Next Greatest Pleasure Consists In Preventing Others From Enjoying Themselves, Or, More Generally, In The Acquisition Of Power.

Beware The Man Of The Single Book

Are You Never Afraid Of God's Judgement In Denying Him? Most Certainly Not. I Also Deny Zeus And Jupiter And Odin And Brahma, But This Causes Me No Qualms. I Observe That A Very Large Portion Of The Human Race Does Not Believe In God And Suffers No Visible Punishment In Consequence. And If There Were A God, I Think It Very Unlikely That He Would Have Such An Uneasy Vanity As To Be Offended By Those Who Doubt His Existence.

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

Love Is A Little Haven Of Refuge From The World.

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.

People Seem Good While They Are Oppressed, But They Only Wish To Become Oppressors In Their Turn: Life Is Nothing But A Competition To Be The Criminal Rather Than The Victim.

Philosophers, For The Most Part, Are Constitutionally Timid, And Dislike The Unexpected. Few Of Them Would Be Genuinely Happy As Pirates Or Burglars. Accordingly They Invent Systems Which Make The Future Calculable, At Least In Its Main Outlines.

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

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

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

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

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.

If One Lived For Ever The Joys Of Life Would Inevitably In The End Lose Their Savour. As It Is, They Remain Perennially Fresh.

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

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

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 Appeared That After First Contemplating A Book On Some Subject, And After Giving Serious Preliminary Attention To It, I Needed A Period Of Subconscious Incubation Which Could Not Be Hurried And Was If Anything Impeded By Deliberate Thinking.... Having, By A Time Of Very Intense Concentration, Planted The Problem In My Subconsciousness, It Would Germinate Underground Until, Suddenly, The Solution Emerged With A Blinding Clarity, So That It Only Remained To Write Down What Happened As If In A Revelation.

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.

After Ages During Which The Earth Produced Harmless Trilobites And Butterflies, Evolution Progressed To The Point At Which It Generated Neros, Genghis Khans, And Hitlers. This, However, Is A Passing Nightmare; In Time The Earth Will Become Again Incapable Of Supporting Life, And Peace Will Return.

Few People Can Be Happy Unless They Hate Some Other Person, Nation, Or Creed.

The Examination System, And The Fact That Instruction Is Treated Mainly As A Training For A Livelihood, Leads The Young To Regard Knowledge From A Purely Utilitarian Point Of View As The Road To Money, Not As The Gateway To Wisdom.

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

The Use Of Force Stands In Need Of Control By A Public Neutral Authority, In The Interests Of Liberty No Less Than Of Justice. Within A Nation, This Public Authority Will Naturally Be The State; In Relations Between Nations, If The Present Anarchy Is To Cease, It Will Have To Be Some International Parliament.

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

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

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

Power, Like Vanity, Is Insatiable. Nothing Short Of Omnipotence Could Satisfy It Completely.

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.

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

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

It Is Not Known Why The Lord Made The Human Body As He Did, Since One Might Suppose That Omnipotence Could Have Made It Such As Would Not Have Shocked The Nice People.

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.

I Feel Life Is So Small Unless It Has Windows Into Other Worlds.

In Adolescence, I Hated Life And Was Continually On The Verge Of Suicide, From Which, However, I Was Restrained By The Desire To Know More Mathematics. Now, On The Contrary, I Enjoy Life; I Might Almost Say That With Every Year That Passes I Enjoy It More.

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.

Hitler Is An Outcome Of Rousseau.

Education Ought To Foster The Wish For Truth, Not The Conviction That Some Particular Creed Is The Truth.

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

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.

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.

Cruelty Is, In Theory, A Perfectly Adequate Ground For Divorce, But It May Be Interpreted So As To Become Absurd.

Trending Author

Charlotte Bronte

Roberto Cavalli

Category