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People Will Tell Us That Without The Consolations Of Religion They Would Be Intolerably Unhappy. So Far As This Is True, It Is A Coward's Argument. Nobody But A Coward Would Consciously Choose To Live In A Fool's Paradise. When A Man Suspects His Wife Of Infidelity, He Is Not Thought The Better Of For Shutting His Eyes To The Evidence. And I Cannot See Why Ignoring Evidence Should Be Contemptible In One Case And Admirable In The Other.

-Bertrand Russell

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People Will Tell Us

Bertrand Russell

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People Will Tell Us That Without The Consolations Of Religion They Would Be Intolerably Unhappy. So Far As This Is True, It Is A Coward's Argument. Nobody But A Coward Would Consciously Choose To Live In A Fool's Paradise. When A Man Suspects His Wife Of Infidelity, He Is Not Thought The Better Of For Shutting His Eyes To The Evidence. And I Cannot See Why Ignoring Evidence Should Be Contemptible In One Case And Admirable In The Other.

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The Luxury To Disparage Freedom Is The Privilege Of Those Who Already Possess It.

All Knowledge, We Feel, Must Be Built Up Upon Our Instinctive Beliefs; And If These Are Rejected, Nothing Is Left.

It Is, Of Course, Clear That A Country With A Large Foreign Population Must Endeavour, Through Its Schools, To Assimilate The Children Of Immigrants. It Is, However, Unfortunate That A Large Part Of This Process Should Be Effected By Means Of A Somewhat Blatant Nationalism.

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The Really Useful Education Is That Which Follows The Direction Of The Child's Own Instinctive Interests, Supplying Knowledge For Which It Is Seeking, Not Dry, Detailed Information Wholly Out Of Relation To Its Spontaneous Desires.

Orthodoxy Is The Death Of Intelligence.

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.

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.

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

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The Knowledge Exists By Which Universal Happiness Can Be Secured; The Chief Obstacle To Its Utilization For That Purpose Is The Teaching Of Religion. Religion Prevents Our Children From Having A Rational Education; Religion Prevents Us From Removing The Fundamental Causes Of War; Religion Prevents Us From Teaching The Ethic Of Scientific Cooperation In Place Of The Old Fierce Doctrines Of Sin And Punishment. It Is Possible That Mankind Is On The Threshold Of A Golden Age; But, If So, It Will Be Necessary First To Slay The Dragon That Guards The Door, And This Dragon Is Religion.

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Drunkeness Is Temporary Suicide: The Happiness That It Brings Is Merely Negative, A Momentary Cessation Of Unhappiness.

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

The Harm That Theology Has Done Is Not To Create Cruel Impulses, But To Give Them The Sanction Of What Professes To Be Lofty Ethic, And To Confer An Apparently Sacred Character Upon Practices Which Have Come Down From More Ignorant And Barbarous Times.

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A Man Of Seville Is Shaved By The Barber Of Seville If And Only If The Man Does Not Shave Himself. Does The Barber Shave Himself?

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.

It Is Permissible With Certain Precautions To Speak In Print Of Coitus, But It Is Not Permissible To Employ The Monosyllabic Synonym For This Word.

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.

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

One Must Care About A World One Will Not See.

The Chicken Noticed That The Farmer Came Every Day To Feed It. It Predicted That The Farmer Would Continue To Bring Food Every Day. Inductivists Think That The Chicken Had "extrapolated" Its Observations Into A Theory, And That Each Feeding Time Added Justification To That Theory. Then One Day The Farmer Came And Wrung The Chicken's Neck. This Inductively Justifies The Conclusion That Induction Cannot Justify Any Conclusion.

Unfortunately, However, Power Is Sweet, And The Man Who In The Beginning Seeks Power Merely In Order To Have Scope For His Benevolence Is Likely, Before Long, To Love The Power For Its Own Sake.

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

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

I Do Not Pretend To Start With Precise Questions. I Do Not Think You Can Start With Anything Precise. You Have To Achieve Such Precision As You Can, As You Go Along.

It Is Odd That Neither The Church Nor Modern Public Opinion Condemns Petting, Provided It Stops Short At A Certain Point. At What Point Sin Begins Is A Matter As To Which Casuists Differ. One Eminently Orthodox Catholic Divine Laid It Down That A Confessor May Fondle A Nun's Breasts, Provided He Does It Without Evil Intent. But I Doubt Whether Modern Authorities Would Agree With Him On This Point.

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

I Believe In Using Words, Not Fists. I Believe In My Outrage Knowing People Are Living In Boxes On The Street. I Believe In Honesty. I Believe In A Good Time. I Believe In Good Food. I Believe In Sex.

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

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

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

I Say Quite Deliberately That The Christian Religion, As Organized In Its Churches, Has Been And Still Is The Principal Enemy Of Moral Progress In The World.

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

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.

The Coward Wretch Whose Hand And Heart Can Bear To Torture Aught Below, Is Ever First To Quail And Start From The Slightest Pain Or Equal Foe.

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 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.

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

The Significance Of A Fact Is Relative To [the General Body Of Scientific] Knowledge. To Say That A Fact Is Significant In Science, Is To Say That It Helps To Establish Or Refute Some General Law; For Science, Though It Starts From Observation Of The Particular, Is Not Concerned Essentially With The Particular, But With The General. A Fact, In Science, Is Not A Mere Fact, But An Instance. In This The Scientist Differs From The Artist, Who, If He Deigns To Notice Facts At All, Is Likely To Notice Them In All Their Particularity.

My Own Belief Is That In Most Ages And In Most Places Obscure Psychological Forces Led Men To Adopt Systems Involving Quite Unnecessary Cruelty, And That This Is Still The Case Among The Most Civilized Races At The Present Day.

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

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.

People Who Are Vigorous And Brutal Often Find War Enjoyable.

It Seems To Be The Fate Of Idealists To Obtain What They Have Struggled For In A Form Which Destroys Their Ideals.

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

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

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

Envy Is The Basis Of Democracy.

There Are Some Simple Maxims Which I Think Might Be Commended To Writers Of Expository Prose. First: Never Use A Long Word If A Short Word Will Do. So, If You Want To Make A Statement With A Great Many Qualifications, Put Some Of The Qualifications In Separate Sentences. Third: Do Not Let The Beginning Of Your Sentence Lead The Reader To An Expectation Which Is Contradicted By The End.

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.

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

We Are All Prone To The Malady Of The Introvert Who With The Manifold Spectacle Of The World Spread Out Before Him, Turns Away And Gazes Only Upon The Emptiness Within.

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

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

I Suggest To Young Professors That Their First Work Should Be Written In A Jargon Only To Be Understood By The Erudite Few. With That Behind Them, They Can Ever After Say What They Have To Say In A Language 'understand Of The People.'

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

Every Man, Wherever He Goes, Is Encompassed By A Cloud Of Comforting Convictions, Which Move With Him Like Flies On A Summer Day.

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.

Any Philosophy Worth Taking Seriously Would Have To Be Built Upon A Firm Foundation Of Unyielding Despair.

Those Who In Principle Oppose Birth Control Are Either Incapable Of Arithmetic Or Else In Favour Of War, Pestilence And Famine As Permanent Features Of Human Life.

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

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.

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

The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

To Be Able To Concentrate For A Considerable Time Is Essential To Difficult Achievement.

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

I Feel As If One Would Only Discover On One's Death Bed What One Ought To Have Lived For

There Can't Be A Practical Reason For Believing Something That Is Not True.

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.

If The State Does Not Acquire Supremacy Over [vast Private] Enterprises, It Becomes Their Puppet, And They Become The Real State.

I Believe That The Abolition Of Private Ownership Of Land And Capital Is A Necessary Step Toward Any World In Which The Nations Are To Live At Peace With One Another.

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.

Anything You're Good At Contributes To Happiness.

The More Intense Has Been The Religion Of Any Period And The More Profound Has Been The Dogmatic Belief, The Greater Has Been The Cruelty And The Worse Has Been The State Of Affairs.

In Spite Of Death, The Mark And Seal Of The Parental Control, Man Is Yet Free, During His Brief Years, To Examine, To Criticise, To Know, And In Imagination To Create. To Him Alone, In The World With Which He Is Acquainted, This Freedom Belongs; And In This Lies His Superiority To The Resistless Forces That Control His Outward Life.

The Secrets To Happiness Include Enterprise, Exploration Of One's Interests And The Overcoming Of Obstacles.

I Do Not Believe That Science Per Se Is An Adequate Source Of Happiness, Nor Do I Think That My Own Scientific Outlook Has Contributed Very Greatly To My Own Happiness, Which I Attribute To Defecating Twice A Day With Unfailing Regularity.

So Far As I Can Remember, There Is Not One Word In The Gospels In Praise Of Intelligence.

Throughout The Long Period Of Religious Doubt, I Had Been Rendered Very Unhappy By The Gradual Loss Of Belief, But When The Process Was Completed, I Found To My Surprise That I Was Quite Glad To Be Done With The Whole Subject.

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

Ethics Is In Origin The Art Of Recommending To Others The Sacrifices Required For Cooperation With Oneself.

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.

The More Things A Man Is Interested In, The More Opportunities Of Happiness He Has And The Less He Is At The Mercy Of Fate, Since If He Loses One Thing He Can Fall Back Upon Another.

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

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

(on A History Of Western Philosophy) I Was Sometimes Accused By Reviewers Of Writing Not A True History But A Biased Account Of The Events That I Arbitrarily Chose To Write Of. But To My Mind, A Man Without A Bias Cannot Write Interesting History - If, Indeed, Such Man Exists.

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.

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

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

What Is Best In Mathematics Deserves Not Merely To Be Learnt As A Task, But To Assimilated As A Part Of Daily Thought, And Brought Again And Again Before The Mind With Ever-renewed Encouragement.

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

The Doctrine (of) Maintaining That The Language Of Daily Life, With Words Used In Their Ordinary Meanings, Suffices For Philosophy . . . I Find Myself Totally Unable To Accept . . . . Because It Makes Almost Inevitable The Perpetuation Amongst Philosophers Of The Muddle-headedness They Have Taken Over From Common Sense.

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

Dogmatism Is The Greatest Of Mental Obstacles To Human Happiness.

The Tragedy Of The People Of Palestine Is That Their Country Was “given” By A Foreign Power To Another People For The Creation Of A New State. The Result Was That Many Hundreds Of Thousands Of Innocent People Were Made Permanently Homeless. With Every New Conflict Their Numbers Increased. How Much Longer Is The World Willing To Endure This Spectacle Of Wanton Cruelty?

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

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

The State Is A Collection Of Officials, Different For Difference Purposes, Drawing Comfortable Incomes So Long As The Status Quo Is Preserved. The Only Alteration They Are Likely To Desire In The Status Quo Is An Increase Of Bureaucracy And The Power Of Bureaucrats.

I Am As Firmly Convinced That Religions Do Harm As I Am That They Are Untrue.

The Essence Of The Liberal Outlook Lies Not In What Opinions Are Held, But In How They Are Held; Instead Of Being Held Dogmatically, They Are Held Tentatively, And With A Consciousness That New Evidence May At Any Moment Lead To Their Abandonment.

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

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

Never Try To Discourage Thinking, For You Are Sure To Succeed.

Righteousness Cannot Be Born Until Self-righteousness Is Dead.

Law In Origin Was Merely A Codification Of The Power Of Dominant Groups, And Did Not Aim At Anything That To A Modern Man Would Appear To Be Justice

It Is Because Modern Education Is So Seldom Inspired By A Great Hope That It So Seldom Achieves Great Results. The Wish To Preserve The Past Rather That The Hope Of Creatingfuture Dominates The Minds Of Those Who Control The Teaching Of The Young.

Do Not Feel Certain Of Anything.

To Understand The Actual World As It Is, Not As We Should Wish It To Be, Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

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.

When All Experts Agree, You Need To Watch Out.

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

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?

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

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

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.

Admiration Of The Proletariat, Like That Of Dams, Power Stations, And Aeroplanes, Is Part Of The Ideology Of The Machine Age.

All Great Books Contain Boring Portions, And All Great Lives Have Contained Uninteresting Stretches.

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.

What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

When Anaesthetics Were Invented They Were Thought To Be Wicked As Being An Attempt To Thwart God's Will. Insanity Was Thought To Be Due To Diabolic Possession, And It Was Believed That Demons Inhabiting A Madman Could Be Driven Out By Inflicting Pain Upon Him, And So Making Them Uncomfortable. In Pursuit Of This Opinion, Lunatics Were Treated For Years On End With Systematic And Conscientious Brutality.

Americans Need Rest, But Do Not Know It.

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

Upon Hearing Via Littlewood An Exposition On The Theory Of Relativity: To Think I Have Spent My Life On Absolute Muck.

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

In The Daily Lives Of Most Men And Women, Fear Plays A Greater Part Than Hope: They Are More Filled With The Thought Of The Possessions That Others May Take From Them, Than Of The Joy That They Might Create In Their Own Lives And In The Lives With Which They Come In Contact. It Is Not So That Life Should Be Lived.

What Is Matter? Never Mind.

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

In The Part Of This Universe That We Know There Is Great Injustice, And Often The Good Suffer, And Often The Wicked Prosper, And One Hardly Knows Which Of Those Is The More Annoying.

Even In The Most Purely Logical Realms, It Is Insight That First Arrives At What Is New.

The Atomists , Unlike Socrates , Plato , And Aristotle , Sought To Explain The World Without Introducing The Notion Of Purpose Or Final Cause.

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

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.

Freedom Of Opinion Can Only Exist When The Government Thinks Itself Secure.

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

Every Sane And Sensible And Quiet Thing We Do Is Absolutely Ignored By The Press.

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.

A Democrat Need Not Believe That The Majority Will Always Reach A Wise Decision. He Should However Believe In The Necessity Of Accepting The Decision Of The Majority, Be It Wise Or Unwise, Until Such A Time That The Majority Reaches Another Decision.

We Shall Say That We Have Acquaintance With Anything Of Which We Are Directly Aware, Without The Intermediary Of Any Process Of Inference Of Any Knowledge Of Truths.

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

All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Happy Life Must Be To A Great Extent A Quiet Life, For It Is Only In An Atmosphere Of Quiet That True Joy Dare Live.

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

Dont Let The Old Break You; Let The Love Make You

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