Background Image

...

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.

-Bertrand Russell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Philosophers, For The Most

Bertrand Russell

...

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.

Views: 10

Topic

More From Bertrand Russell

In America Everybody Is Of The Opinion That He Has No Social Superiors, Since All Men Are Equal, But He Does Not Admit That He Has No Social Inferiors, For, From The Time Of Jefferson Onward, The Doctrine That All Men Are Equal Applies Only Upwards, Not Downwards.

The World That We Must Seek Is A World In Which The Creative Spirit Is Alive, In Which Life Is An Adventure Full Of Joy And Hope, Based Rather Upon The Impulse To Construct Than Upon The Desire To Retain What We Possess Or To Seize What Is Possessed By Others.

Opinions Which Justify Cruelty Are Inspired By Cruel Impulses.

I Say People Who Feel They Must Have A Faith Or Religion In Order To Face Life Are Showing A Kind Of Cowardice, Which In Any Other Sphere Would Be Considered Contemptible. But When It Is In The Religious Sphere It Is Thought Admirable, And I Cannot Admire Cowardice Whatever Sphere It Is In.

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.

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

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.

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

So In Everything: Power Lies With Those Who Control Finance, Not With Those Who Know The Matter Upon Which The Money Is To Be Spent. Thus, The Holders Of Power Are, In General, Ignorant And Malevolent, And The Less They Exercise Their Power The Better.

It Is A Waste Of Energy To Be Angry With A Man Who Behaves Badly, Just As It Is To Be Angry With A Car That Won't Go.

The Philosophies That Have Been Inspired By Scientific Technique Are Power Philosophies, And Tend To Regard Everything Non-human As Mere Raw Material. Ends Are No Longer Considered; Only The Skillfulness Of The Process Is Valued. This Also Is A Form Of Madness. It Is, In Our Day, The Most Dangerous Form, And The One Against Which A Sane Philosophy Should Provide An Antidote

The Above Proposition Is Occasionally Useful.

The World Is Full Of Magical Things Patiently Waiting For Our Wits To Grow Sharper.

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

Physics, Owing To The Simplicity Of Its Subject Matter, Has Reached A Higher State Of Development Than Any Other Science.

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.

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

The White Tails Of Rabbits, According To Some Theologians, Have A Purpose, Namely To Make It Easier For Sportsmen To Shoot Them.

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.

Indignation Is A Submission Of Our Thoughts, But Not Of Our Desires.

Righteous Indignation

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

Scientific Method, Although In Its More Refined Forms It May Seem Complicated, Is In Essence Remarkably Simply. It Consists In Observing Such Facts As Will Enable The Observer To Discover General Laws Governing Facts Of The Kind In Question. The Two Stages, First Of Observation, And Second Of Inference To A Law, Are Both Essential, And Each Is Susceptible Of Almost Indefinite Refinement. (1931)

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

When I Was A Child . . . Only Virtue Was Prized, Virtue At The Expense Of Intellect, Health, Happiness, And Every Mundane Good.

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

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

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.'

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.

Whether Science-and Indeed Civilization In General-can Long Survive Depends Upon Psychology, That Is To Say, It Depends Upon What Human Beings Desire.

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

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

Indemnity For The Past And Security For The Future.

Love Is Something Far More Than Desire For Sexual Intercourse; It Is The Principal Means Of Escape From The Loneliness Which Afflicts Most Men And Women Throughout The Greater Part Of Their Lives.

One Must Expect A War Between U.s.a. And U.s.s.r. Which Will Begin With The Total Destruction Of London. I Think The War Will Last 30 Years, And Leave A World Without Civilised People, From Which Everything Will Have To Build Afresh - A Process Taking (say) 500 Years.

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 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

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.

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.

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 Tendency Of Our Perceptions Is To Emphasise Increasingly The Objective Elements In An Impression, Unless We Have Some Special Reason, As Artists Have, For Doing The Opposite.

By Self-interest, Man Has Become Gregarious, But In Instinct He Has Remained To A Great Extent Solitary; Hence The Need Of Religion And Morality To Reinforce Self-interest.

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.

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

The Satisfaction To Be Derived From Success In A Great Constructive Enterprise Is One Of The Most Massive That Life Has To Offer.

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 A Philosophy Is To Bring Happiness It Should Be Inspired By Kindly Feelings. Marx Pretended That He Wanted The Happiness Of The Proletariat; What He Really Wanted Was The Unhappiness Of The Bourgeois.

War...seems A Mere Madness, A Collective Insanity.

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.

Drunkenness Is Temporary Suicide.

The Practice Of Inhibiting Impulses, Which Is To A Great Extent Necessary To Civilized Life, Makes Mistakes Easier, By Preventing Experience Of The Actions To Which A Desire Would Otherwise Lead, And By Often Causing The Inhibited Impulses Themselves To Be Unnoticed Or Quickly Forgotten.

The Pursuit Of Knowledge Is, I Think, Mainly Actuated By Love Of Power. And So Are All Advances In Scientific Technique.

We Know Very Little, And Yet It Is Astonishing That We Know So Much, And Still More Astonishing That So Little Knowledge Can Give Us So Much Power.

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

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.

Every Increase In Knowledge Requires An Increase In Wisdom

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Religion Is Based, I Think, Primarily And Mainly Upon Fear.

Science And Religion

Even If It Is Indifferent To Human Desires, As It Seems To Be; If Human Life Is A Passing Episode, Hardly Noticeable In The Vastness Of Cosmic Processes; If There Is No Superhuman Purpose, And No Hope Of Ultimate Salvation, It Is Better To Know And Acknowledge This Truth Than To Endeavor, In Futile Self-assertion, To Order The Universe To Be What We Find Comfortable.

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

If All Our Happiness Is Bound Up Entirely In Our Personal Circumstances It Is Difficult Not To Demand Of Life More Than It Has To Give.

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.

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

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

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

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

The Purpose Of Education Is To Teach A Defense Against Eloquence.

Public Opinion Is Always More Tyrannical Towards Those Who Obviously Fear It Than Towards Those Who Feel Indifferent To It.

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.

Mathematics Takes Us Into The Region Of Absolute Necessity, To Which Not Only The Actual Word, But Every Possible Word, Must Conform.

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.

Nothing Of Importance Is Ever Achieved Without Discipline. I Feel Myself Sometimes Not Wholly In Sympathy With Some Modern Educational Theorists, Because I Think That They Underestimate The Part That Discipline Plays. But The Discipline You Have In Your Life Should Be One Determined By Your Own Desires And Your Own Needs, Not Put Upon You By Society Or Authority.

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

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

Measures Of Sterilization Should, In My Opinion, Be Very Definitely Confined To Persons Who Are Mentally Defective

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.

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.

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.

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.

When All Experts Agree, You Need To Watch Out.

The Most Savage Controversies Are About Matters As To Which There Is No Good Evidence Either Way.

Diversity Is Essential To Happiness And In Utopia There Is Hardly Any. This Is A Defect In All Planned Social Systems.

(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.

Protestants, From The First, Have Been Distinguished From Their Opponents By What They Do Not Believe; To Throw Over One More Dogma Is, Therefore, Merely To Carry The Movement One Stage Further. Moral Fervor Is The Essence Of The Matter.

Aristotle's Metaphysics, Roughly Speaking, May Be Described As Plato Diluted By Common Sense. He Is Difficult Because Plato And Common Sense Do Not Mix Easily.

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.

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

If A Black Death Could Be Spread Throughout The World Once In Every Generation Survivors Could Procreate Freely Without Making The World Too Full.

The Whole Conception Of A God Is A Conception Derived From The Ancient Oriental Despotisms. It Is A Conception Quite Unworthy Of Free Men. We Ought To Stand Up And Look The World Frankly In The Face. We Ought To Make The Best We Can Of The World, And If It Is Not So Good As We Wish, After All It Will Still Be Better Than What These Others Have Made Of It In All These Ages.

The Slave Is Doomed To Worship Time And Fate And Death, Because They Are Greater Than Anything He Finds In Himself, And Because All His Thoughts Are Of Things Which They Devour.

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.

Socrates Was The Chief Saint Of The Stoics Throughout Their History ; His Attitude At The Time Of His Trial, His Refusal To Escape, His Calmness In The Face Of Death , And His Contention That The Perpetrator Of Injustice Injures Himself More Than His Victim, All Fitted In Perfectly With Stoic Teaching. So Did His Indifference To Heat And Cold, His Plainness In Matters Of Food And Dress, And His Complete Independence Of All Bodily Comforts.

What Vanity Needs For Its Satisfaction Is Glory, And It's Easy To Have Glory Without Power.

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.

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

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.

Be Scrupulously Truthful, Even If The Truth Is Inconvenient, For It Is More Inconvenient When You Try To Conceal It.

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

We Must Be Sceptical Even Of Our Scepticism.

No Man Treats A Motorcar As Foolishly As He Treats Another Human Being. When The Car Will Not Go, He Does Not Attribute Its Annoying Behavior To Sin; He Does Not Say, 'you Are A Wicked Motorcar, And I Shall Not Give You Any More Petrol Until You Go.' He Attempts To Find Out What Is Wrong And To Set It Right.

One Of The Troubles About Vanity Is That It Grows With What It Feeds On. The More You Are Talked About, The More You Will Wish To Be Talked About.

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

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

Nothing Is So Exhausting As Indecision, And Nothing Is So Futile.

Procrastination

It Is Likely That America Will Be More Important During The Next Century Or Two, But After That It May Well Be The Turn Of China.

Why Is Propaganda So Much More Successful When It Stirs Up Hatred Than When It Tries To Stir Up Friendly Feeling?

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.

In Our Complex World, There Cannot Be Fruitful Initiative Without Government, But Unfortunately There Can Be Government Without Initiative.

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

Have No Respect For The Authority Of Others, For There Are Always Contrary Authorities To Be Found

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.

It Is A Natural Propensity To Attribute Misfortune To Someone's Malignity.

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

A Priori Logical Propositions Are Such As Can Be Known A Priori Without Study Of The Actual World.

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

The Place Of The Father In The Modern Suburban Family Is A Very Small One, Particularly If He Plays Golf.

I Should Like To Believe My People's Religion, Which Was Just What I Could Wish, But Alas, It Is Impossible. I Have Really No Religion, For My God, Being A Spirit Shown Merely By Reason To Exist, His Properties Utterly Unknown, Is No Help To My Life. I Have Nor The Parson's Comfortable Doctrine That Every Good Action Has Its Reward, And Every Sin Is Forgiven. My Whole Religion Is This: Do Every Duty, And Expect No Reward For It, Either Here Or Hereafter.

I Don't Like The Spirit Of Socialism - I Think Freedom Is The Basis Of Everything.

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little. At Least, We Feel Too Little Of Those Creative Emotions From Which A Good Life Springs.

The "social Contract," In The Only Sense In Which It Is Not Completely Mythical, Is A Contract Among Conquerors, Which Loses Its Raison D'être If They Are Deprived Of The Benefits Of Conquest.

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.

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

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

... Mathematical Knowledge ... Is, In Fact, Merely Verbal Knowledge. "3" Means "2+1", And "4" Means "3+1". Hence It Follows (though The Proof Is Long) That "4" Means The Same As "2+2". Thus Mathematical Knowledge Ceases To Be Mysterious.

Some Care Is Needed In Using Descartes' Argument. "i Think, Therefore I Am" Says Rather More Than Is Strictly Certain. It Might Seem As Though We Are Quite Sure Of Being The Same Person To-day As We Were Yesterday, And This Is No Doubt True In Some Sense. But The Real Self Is As Hard To Arrive At As The Real Table, And Does Not Seem To Have That Absolute, Convincing Certainty That Belongs To Particular Experiences.

I Think It Would Be Just To Say The Most Essential Characteristic Of Mind Is Memory, Using This Word In Its Broadest Sense To Include Every Influence Of Past Experience On Present Reactions.

If You Wish To Be Happy Yourself, You Must Resign Yourself To Seeing Others Also Happy.

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.

Africans Had To Be Taught That Nudity Is Wicked; This Was Done Very Cheaply By Missionaries.

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?

Philosophy, Though Unable To Tell Us With Certainty What Is The True Answer To The Doubts Which It Raises, Is Able To Suggest Many Possibilities Which Enlarge Our Thoughts And Free Them From The Tyranny Of Custom.

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

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.

Cruel Men Believe In A Cruel God And Use Their Belief To Excuse Their Cruelty. Only Kindly Men Believe In A Kindly God, And They Would Be Kindly In Any Case.

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.

Belief In God And A Future Life Makes It Possible To Go Through Life With Less Of Stoic Courage Than Is Needed By Skeptics.

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.

Every Isolated Passion, Is, In Isolation, Insane; Sanity May Be Defined As Synthesis Of Insanities. Every Dominant Passion Generates A Dominant Fear, The Fear Of Its Non-fulfillment. Every Dominant Fear Generates A Nightmare, Sometimes In Form Of Explicit And Conscious Fanaticism, Sometimes In Paralyzing Timidity, Sometimes In An Unconscious Or Subconscious Terror Which Finds Expression Only In Dreams. The Man Who Wishes To Preserve Sanity In A Dangerous World Should Summon In His Own Mind A Parliament Of Fears, In Which Each In Turn Is Voted Absurd By All The Others.

Modern Life Cannot Be Constructed On . . . Physically Strenuous Principles. A Great Deal Of Work Is Sedentary, And Most Manual Work Exercises Only A Few Specialized Muscles.

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.

This Has Been My Life. I Have Found It Worth Living, And Would Gladly Live It Again If The Second Chance Were Offered Me.

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.

The Essence Of Life Is Doing Things For Their Own Sakes.

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

The Whole Problem With The World Is That Fools And Fanatics Are Always So Certain Of Themselves, And Wiser People So Full Of Doubts.

The Pure Mathematician, Like The Musician, Is A Free Creator Of His World Of Ordered Beauty.

The Taboo Against Nakedness Is An Obstacle To A Decent Attitude On The Subject Of Sex.

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.

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.

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

Men Fear Thought As They Fear Nothing Else On Earth - More Than Ruin, More Even Than Death. Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habits; Thought Is Anarchic And Lawless, Indifferent To Authority, Careless Of The Well-tried Wisdom Of The Ages. Thought Looks Into The Pit Of Hell And Is Not Afraid ... Thought Is Great And Swift And Free, The Light Of The World, And The Chief Glory Of Man.

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.

It Has Been Said That Man Is A Rational Animal. All My Life I Have Been Searching For Evidence Which Could Support This.

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.

The . . . Increase In The Power Of Officials Is A Constant Source Of Irritation To Everybody Else.

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

The Difficulty Is Old, But None The Less Real. An Omnipotent Being Who Created A World Containing Evil Not Due To Sin Must Himself Be At Least Partially Evil.

Do Not Fear To Be Eccentric In Opinion, For Every Opinion Now Accepted Was Once Eccentric.

Always Remember That True Happiness Is Not In Getting What You Want, But Wanting What You Already Have. He Who Dies With The Most Toys Is Still Dead. What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

Getting What You Want

Folly Is Perennial And Yet The Human Race Has Survived.

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

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.

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

The Solution Of The Difficulties Which Formerly Surrounded The Mathematical Infinite Is Probably The Greatest Achievement Of Which Our Age Has To Boast.

Of All Forms Of Caution, Caution In Love Is Perhaps The Most Fatal To True Happiness.

When We Look At A Rock What We Are Seeing Is Not The Rock, But The Effect Of The Rock Upon Us.

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

War Does Not Determine Who Is Right - Only Who Is Left.

Americans Need Rest, But Do Not Know It. I Believe This To Be A Large Part Of The Explanation Of The Crime Wave In The United States.

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

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.

A Marriage Is Likely To Be Called Happy If Neither Party Ever Expected To Get Much Happiness Out Of It.

Philosophy Is To Be Studied, Not For The Sake Of Any Definite Answers To Its Questions, Since No Definite Answers Can, As A Rule, Be Known To Be True, But Rather For The Sake Of The Questions Themselves; Because These Questions Enlarge Our Conception Of What Is Possible, Enrich Our Intellectual Imagination And Diminish The Dogmatic Assurance Which Closes The Mind Against Speculation; But Above All Because, Through The Greatness Of The Universe Which Philosophy Contemplates, The Mind Is Also Rendered Great, And Becomes Capable Of That Union With The Universe Which Constitutes Its Highest Good.

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.

If I Were A Medical Man, I Should Prescribe A Holiday To Any Patient Who Considered His Work Important.

The Triumph Of Science Has Been Mainly Due To Its Practical Utility, And There Has Been An Attempt To Divorce This Aspect From That Of Theory, Thus Making Science More And More A Technique, And Less And Less A Doctrine As To The Nature Of The World. The Penetration Of This Point Of View To Philosophers Is Very Recent.

Of Course Not. After All, I May Be Wrong.

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

I Never Held Negroes To Be Inherently Inferior. The Statement In Marriage And Morals Refers To Environmental Conditioning. I Have Had It Withdrawn From Subsequent Editions Because It Is Clearly Ambiguous.

What Is New In Our Time Is The Increased Power Of The Authorities To Enforce Their Prejudices.

A Truer Image Of The World, I Think, Is Obtained By Picturing Things As Entering Into The Stream Of Time From An Eternal World Outside, Than From A View Which Regards Time As The Devouring Tyrant Of All That Is.

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

Meantime, The World In Which We Exist Has Other Aims. But It Will Pass Away, Burnt Up In The Fire Of Its Own Hot Passions; And From Its Ashes Will Spring A New And Younger World, Full Of Fresh Hope, Woth The Light Of Morning In Its Eyes.

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.

A Habit Of Basing Convictions Upon Evidence, And Of Giving To Them Only That Degree Or Certainty Which The Evidence Warrants, Would, If It Became General, Cure Most Of The Ills From Which The World Suffers.

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

But As The Work Proceeded I Was Continually Reminded Of The Fable About The Elephant And The Tortoise. Having Constructed An Elephant Upon Which The Mathematical World Could Rest, I Found The Elephant Tottering, And Proceeded To Construct A Tortoise To Keep The Elephant From Falling. But The Tortoise Was Not More Secure Than The Elephant, And After Some Twenty Years Of Very Arduous Toil, I Came To The Conclusion That There Was Nothing More That I Could Do In The Way Of Making Mathematical Knowledge Indubitable.

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.

You Could Take Up The Line That Some Of The Gnostics Took Up - A Line Which I Often Thought Was A Very Plausible One - That As A Matter Of Fact This World That We Know Was Made By The Devil At A Moment When God Was Not Looking. There Is A Good Deal To Be Said For That, And I Am Not Concerned To Refute It.

Skilled Work, Of No Matter What Kind, Is Only Done Well By Those Who Take A Certain Pleasure In It, Quite Apart From Its Utility, Either To Themselves In Earning A Living, Or To The World Through Its Outcome.

Most People Would Sooner Die Than Think; In Fact, They Do So.

Escape From Boredom Is One Of The Really Powerful Desires Of Almost All Human Beings.

To Think I Have Spent My Life On Absolute Muck.

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

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

A Word Is Used "correctly" When The Average Hearer Will Be Affected By It In The Way Intended. This Is A Psychological, Not A Literary, Definition Of "correctness". The Literary Definition Would Substitute, For The Average Hearer, A Person Of High Education Living A Long Time Ago; The Purpose Of This Definition Is To Make It Difficult To Speak Or Write Correctly.

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.

Trending Author

Rutherford B. Hayes

Christine Lahti

Priscilla Presley

G. I. Gurdjieff

Category