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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.

-Bertrand Russell

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Men Have Physical Needs,

Bertrand Russell

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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.

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Science Is What You Know, Philosophy Is What You Don't Know.

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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.

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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.

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The True Function Of Logic ... As Applied To Matters Of Experience ... Is Analytic Rather Than Constructive; Taken A Priori, It Shows The Possibility Of Hitherto Unsuspected Alternatives More Often Than The Impossibility Of Alternatives Which Seemed Prima Facie Possible. Thus, While It Liberates Imagination As To What The World May Be, It Refuses To Legislate As To What The World Is

These Illustrations Suggest Four General Maxims[...]. The First Is: Remember That Your Motives Are Not Always As Altruistic As They Seem To Yourself. The Second Is: Don't Over-estimate Your Own Merits. The Third Is: Don't Expect Others To Take As Much Interest In You As You Do Yourself. And The Fourth Is: Don't Imagine That Most People Give Enough Thought To You To Have Any Special Desire To Persecute You.

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.

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.

I Was Told That The Chinese Said They Would Bury Me By The Western Lake And Build A Shrine To My Memory. I Have Some Slight Regret That This Did Not Happen, As I Might Have Become A God, Which Would Have Been Very Chic For An Atheist.

How About Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was It Really He Who Ate The Apple? Or Was It Homo Pekiniensis?

One Of The Main Causes Of Trouble In The World Is Dogmatic And Fanatical Belief In Some Doctrine For Which There Is No Adequate Evidence

I Do Not Think That The Real Reason Why People Accept Religion Has Anything To Do With Argumentation. They Accept Religion On Emotional Grounds.

I Think Modern Educational Theorists Are Inclined To Attach Too Much Importance To The Negative Virtue Of Not Interfering With Children, And Too Little To The Positive Merit Of Enjoying Their Company.

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.

Your Writing Is Never As Good As You Hoped; But Never As Bad As You Feared.

The Idea That The Poor Should Have Leisure Has Always Been Shocking To The Rich.

Machines Deprive Us Of Two Things Which Are Certainly Important Ingredients Of Human Happiness, Namely, Spontaneity And Variety.

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.

Even If The Open Windows Of Science At First Make Us Shiver After The Cozy Indoor Warmth Of Traditional Humanizing Myths, In The End The Fresh Air Brings Vigor, And The Great Spaces Have A Splendor Of Their Own.

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.

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

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

Do Not Use Power To Suppress Opinions You Think Pernicious, For If You Do The Opinions Will Suppress You.

It Is False To Suggest That Men Must Turn Away From His Desires In The Interest Of A Higher Duty. Men Only Responds To Duty If He Desires To Do So. To Understand Men, You Must Understand Their Desires And The Relative Strength Of Those Desires.

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

Aristotle Is The Last Greek Philosopher Who Faces The World Cheerfully; After Him, All Have, In One Form Or Another, A Philosophy Of Retreat.

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.

When All Experts Agree, You Need To Watch Out.

In Action, In Desire, We Must Submit Perpetually To The Tyranny Of Outside Forces; But In Thought, In Aspiration, We Are Free, Free From Our Fellowmen, Free From The Petty Planet On Which Our Bodies Impotently Crawl, Free Even, While We Live, From The Tyranny Of Death.

Dr. Arnold . . . The Admired Reformer Of Public Schools, Came Across Some Cranks Who Thought It A Mistake To Flog Boys. Anyone Reading His Outburst Of Furious Indignation Against This Opinion Will Be Forced To The Conclusion That He Enjoyed Inflicting Floggings.

Science Can Teach Us, And I Think Our Hearts Can Teach Us, No Longer To Look Around For Imaginary Supporters, No Longer To Invent Allies In The Sky, But Rather To Look To Our Own Efforts Here Below To Make The World A Fit Place To Live.

Love Should Be A Tree Whose Roots Are Deep In The Earth, But Whose Branches Extend Into Heaven.

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

Moral Progress Has Consisted In The Main Of Protest Against Cruel Customs, And Of Attempts To Enlarge Human Sympathy.

What Men Really Want Is Not Knowledge But Certainty.

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.

One Is Often Told That It Is A Very Wrong Thing To Attack Religion, Because Religion Makes Men Virtuous. So I Am Told; I Have Not Noticed It.

Beware The Man Of The Single Book

To Teach How To Live Without Certainty And Yet Without Being Paralysed By Hesitation Is Perhaps The Chief Thing That Philosophy, In Our Age, Can Do For Those Who Study It.

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

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.

The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation ... It Is Common To Wish Well To Oneself, But In Our Technically Unified World, Wishing Well To Oneself Is Sure To Be Futile Unless It Is Combined With Wishing Well To Others.

I Resolved From The Beginning Of My Quest That I Would Not Be Misled By Sentiment And Desire Into Beliefs For Which There Was No Good Evidence.

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.

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

Although This May Seem A Paradox, All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation. When A Man Tells You That He Knows The Exact Truth About Anything, You Are Safe In Inferring That He Is An Inexact Man. Every Careful Measurement In Science Is Always Given With The Probable Error ... Every Observer Admits That He Is Likely Wrong, And Knows About How Much Wrong He Is Likely To Be.

I Believe Myself That Romantic Love Is The Source Of The Most Intense Delights That Life Has To Offer. In The Relation Of A Man And Woman Who Love Each Other With Passion And Imagination And Tenderness, There Is Something Of Inestimable Value, To Be Ignorant Of Which Is A Great Misfortune To Any Human Being.

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

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 Wise Use Of Leisure, It Must Be Conceded, Is A Product Of Civilization And Education.

Mathematics May Be Defined As The Subject In Which We Never Know What We Are Talking About, Nor Whether What We Are Saying Is True.

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

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.

It Is No Credit To The Orthodox That They Do Not Now Believe All The Absurdities That Were Believed 150 Years Ago. The Gradual Emasculation Of The Christian Doctrine Has Been Effected In Spite Of The Most Vigorous Resistance, And Solely As The Result Of The Onslaughts Of Freethinkers.

Bolshevism Is To Be Reckoned With Mohammedanism Rather Than With Christianity And Buddhism. Christianity And Buddhism Are Primarily Personal Religions, With Mystical Doctrines And A Love Of Contemplation. Mohammedanism And Bolshevism Are Practical, Social, Unspiritual, Concerned To Win The Empire Of The World.

Obviousness Is Always The Enemy Of Correctness.

In Attempting To Understand The Elements Out Of Which Mental Phenomena Are Compounded, It Is Of The Greatest Importance To Remember That From The Protozoa To Man There Is Nowhere A Very Wide Gap Either In Structure Or In Behaviour. From This Fact It Is A Highly Probable Inference That There Is Also Nowhere A Very Wide Mental Gap.

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid.

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.

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

Three Passions, Simple But Overwhelmingly Strong, Have Governed My Life: The Longing For Love, The Search For Knowledge, And Unbearable Pity For The Suffering Of Mankind.

Mathematics, Rightly Viewed, Possesses Not Only Truth, But Supreme Beauty A Beauty Cold And Austere, Like That Of Sculpture, Without Appeal To Any Part Of Our Weaker Nature, Without The Georgeous Trappings Of Painting Or Music, Yet Sublimely Pure, And Capable Of A Stern Perfection Such As Only The Greatest Art Can Show. 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 In Poetry.

Truth Is A Shining Goddess, Always Veiled, Always Distant, Never Wholly Approachable, But Worthy Of All The Devotion Of Which The Human Spirit Is Capable.

Mankind Is Divided Into Two Classes: Those Who, Being Artificial, Praise Nature, And Those Who, Being Natural, Praise Art.

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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.

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.

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

Love Cannot Exists As A Duty; To Tell A Child That It Ought To Love Its Parents And Its Brother And Sisters Is Utterly Useless, If Not Worse.

William James Used To Preach The "will-to-believe." For My Part, I Should Wish To Preach The "will-to-doubt." None Of Our Beliefs Are Quite True; All At Least Have A Penumbra Of Vagueness And Error. What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

I Am Paid By The Word, So I Always Write The Shortest Words Possible.

I've Made An Odd Discovery. Every Time I Talk To A Savant I Feel Quite Sure That Happiness Is No Longer A Possibility. Yet When I Talk With My Gardener, I'm Convinced Of The Opposite.

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.

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.

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

Historically, It Is Quite Doubtful Whether Christ Ever Existed At All, And If He Did We Do Not Know Anything About Him.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

Human Nature Is So Constructed That It Gives Affection Most Readily To Those Who Seem Least To Demand It.

Morality In Sexual Relations, When It Is Free From Superstition, Consists Essentially In Respect For The Other Person, And Unwillingness To Use That Person Solely As A Means Of Personal Gratification, Without Regard To His Or Her Desires.

Obscenity Is Whatever Happens To Shock Some Elderly And Ignorant Magistrate.

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

[kant] Was Like Many People: In Intellectual Matters He Was Skeptical, But In Moral Matters He Believed Imjplicitly In The Maximx That He Had Imbibed At His Mother's Knee.

The World In Which We Live Can Be Understood As A Result Of Muddle And Accident; But If It Is The Outcome Of Deliberate Purpose, The Purpose Must Have Been That Of A Fiend. For My Part, I Find Accident A Less Painful And More Plausible Hypothesis.

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

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.

In The Higher Walks Of Politics The Same Sort Of Thing Occurs. The Statesman Who Has Gradually Concentrated All Power Within Himself ... May Have Had Anything But A Public Motive... The Phrases Which Are Customary On The Platform And In The Party Press Have Gradually Come To Him To Seem To Express Truths, And He Mistakes The Rhetoric Of Partisanship For A Genuine Analysis Of Motives... He Retires From The World After The World Has Retired From Him.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence Is Credulity, And Credulity Could Be Enormously Diminished By Instructions As To The Prevalent Forms Of Mendacity.

Morally, A Philosopher Who Uses His Professional Competence For Anything Except A Disinterested Search For Truth Is Guilty Of A Kind Of Treachery.

Professional Competence

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

Many People When They Fall In Love Look For A Little Haven Of Refuge From The World, Where They Can Be Sure Of Being Admired When They Are Not Admirable, And Praised When They Are Not Praiseworthy.

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

Doubt And Certainty

It Appeared To Me Obvious That The Happiness Of Mankind Should Be The Aim Of All Action, And I Discovered To My Surprise That There Were Those Who Thought Otherwise.

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

We All Have A Tendency To Think That The World Must Conform To Our Prejudices. The Opposite View Involves Some Effort Of Thought, And Most People Would Die Sooner Than Think In Fact They Do So.

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Teaching Of Christ, As It Appears In The Gospels, Has Had Extraordinarily Little To Do With The Ethics Of Christians.

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

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