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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

-Bertrand Russell

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Philosophy, Though Unable To

Bertrand Russell

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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

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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.

The Free Intellect Is The Chief Engine Of Human Progress.

With Civilized Men..., It Is, I Think, Chiefly Love Of Excitement Which Makes The Populace Applaud When War Breaks Out; The Emotion Is Exactly The Same As At A Football Match, Although The Results Are Sometimes Somewhat More Serious.

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

Science Is At No Moment Quite Right, But It Is Seldom Quite Wrong, And Has, As A Rule, A Better Chance Of Being Right Than The Theories Of The Unscientific. It Is, Therefore, Rational To Accept It Hypothetically.

There Are Two Ways Of Avoiding Fear: One Is By Persuading Ourselves That We Are Immune From Disaster, And The Other Is By The Practice Of Sheer Courage. The Latter Is Difficult, And To Everybody Becomes Impossible At A Certain Point. The Former Has Therefore Always Been More Popular. Primitive Magic Has The Purpose Of Securing Safety, Either By Injuring Enemies, Or By Protecting Oneself By Talismans, Spells, Or Incantations.

Undoubtedly The Desire For Food Has Been And Still Is One Of The Main Causes Of Political Events.

What Men Really Want Is Not Knowledge But Certainty.

Arithmetic Must Be Discovered In Just The Same Sense In Which Columbus Discovered The West Indies, And We No More Create Numbers Than He Created The Indians.

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

A Hallucination Is A Fact, Not An Error; What Is Erroneous Is A Judgment Based Upon It.

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

Science And Religion

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

Speaking Psycho-analytically, It May Be Laid Down That Any "great Ideal" Which People Mention With Awe Is Really An Excuse For Inflicting Pain On Their Enemies. Good Wine Needs No Bush, And Good Morals Need No Bated Breath.

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.

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.

Much Of The Most Important Evils That Mankind Have To Consider Are Those Which They Inflict Upon Each Other Through Stupidity Or Malevolence Or Both.

Ironclads And Maxim Guns Must Be The Ultimate Arbiters Of Metaphysical Truth.

It Seems To Me Now That Mathematics Is Capable Of An Artistic Excellence As Great As That Of Any Music, Perhaps Greater; Not Because The Pleasure It Gives (although Very Pure) Is Comparable, Either In Intensity Or In The Number Of People Who Feel It, To That Of Music, But Because It Gives In Absolute Perfection That Combination, Characteristic Of Great Art, Of Godlike Freedom, With The Sense Of Inevitable Destiny; Because, In Fact, It Constructs An Ideal World Where Everything Is Perfect And Yet True.

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.

A Life Without Adventure Is Likely To Be Unsatisfying, But A Life In Which Adventure Is Allowed To Take Whatever Form It Will Is Sure To Be Short.

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.

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.

I Wish To Propose For The Reader's Favourable Consideration A Doctrine Which May, I Fear, Appear Wildly Paradoxical And Subversive. The Doctrine In Question Is This: That It Is Undesirable To Believe A Proposition When There Is No Ground Whatever For Supposing It True.

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

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 Man Who Has Fed The Chicken Every Day Throughout Its Life At Last Wrings Its Neck Instead, Showing That More Refined Views As To The Uniformity Of Nature Would Have Been Useful To The Chicken.

No Rules, However Wise, Are A Substitute For Affection And Tact.

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

England And America

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

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.

The Immense Majority Of Intellectually Eminent Men Disbelieve In The Christian Religion, But They Conceal The Fact In Public, Because They Are Afraid Of Losing Their Incomes.

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

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

The 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.

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

Frege Has The Merit Of ... Finding A Third Assertion By Recognising The World Of Logic Which Is Neither Mental Nor Physical.

The Above Proposition Is Occasionally Useful.

Berkeley Retains The Merit Of Having Shown That The Existence Of Matter Is Capable Of Being Denied Without Absurdity.

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

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

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.

If I Were Granted Omnipotence, And Millions Of Years To Experiment In, I Should Not Think Man Much To Boast Of As The Final Result Of All My Efforts.

To Save The World Requires Faith And Courage: Faith In Reason, And Courage To Proclaim What Reason Shows To Be True.

The People Who Are Regarded As Moral Luminaries Are Those Who Forego Ordinary Pleasures Themselves And Find Compensation In Interfering With The Pleasures Of Others.

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

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

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.

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.

The Man Who Pursues Happiness Wisely Will Aim At The Possession Of A Number Of Subsidiary Interests In Addition To Those Central Ones Upon Which His Life Is Built.

When All Experts Agree, You Need To Watch Out.

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not.

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

Indemnity For The Past And Security For The Future.

To The Young I Should Offer Two Maxims: Don't Accept Superficial Solutions Of Difficult Problems. It Is Better To Do A Little Good Than Much Harm. I Should Not Offer Anything More Specific; Every Young Person Should Decide On His Or Her Own Credo.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Thee Will Find Out In Time That I Have A Great Love Of Professing Vile Sentiments, I Don't Know Why, Unless It Springs From Long Efforts To Avoid Priggery.

Every Great Idea Starts Out As A Blasphemy.

It Is Only Theory That Makes Men Completely Incautious.

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.

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.

The Frequency With Which A Man Experiences Lust Depends Upon His Own Physical Condition, Whereas The Occasion Which Rouse Such Feelings In Him Depend Upon The Social Conventions To Which He Is Accustomed

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

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.

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.

I Am Not Myself In Any Degree Ashamed Of Having Changed My Opinions.

In His Youth, Wordsworth Sympathized With The French Revolution, Went To France, Wrote Good Poetry And Had A Natural Daughter. At This Period, He Was A Bad Man. Then He Became Good, Abandoned His Daughter, Adopted Correct Principles And Wrote Bad Poetry.

Philosophy, If It Cannot Answer So Many Questions As We Could Wish, Has At Least The Power Of Asking Questions Which Increase The Interest Of The World, And Show The Strangeness And Wonder Lying Just Below The Surface Even In The Commonest Things Of Daily Life.

Asking Questions

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

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.

Awareness Of Universals Is Called Conceiving, And A Universal Of Which We Are Aware Is Called A Concept.

The Megalomaniac Differs From The Narcissist By The Fact That He Wishes To Be Powerful Rather Than Charming, And Seeks To Be Feared Rather Than Loved. To This Type Belong Many Lunatics And Most Of The Great Men Of History.

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

All Forms Of Fear Produce Fatigue.

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

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

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.

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

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.

In View Of The Fact That In Any Future World War Nuclear Weapons Will Certainly Be Employed, And That Such Weapons Threaten The Continued Existence Of Mankind, We Urge The Governments Of The World To Realize, And To Acknowledge Publicly, That Their Purpose Cannot Be Furthered By A World War, And We Urge Them, Consequently, To Find Peaceful Means For The Settlement Of All Matters Of Dispute Between Them.

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

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

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

The Scientific Attitude Of Mind Involves A Sweeping Away Of All Other Desires In The Interests Of The Desire To Know-it Involves Suppression Of Hopes And Fears, Loves And Hates, And The Whole Subjective Emotional Life, Until We Become Subdued To The Material, Able To See It Frankly, Without Preconceptions, Without Bias, Without Any Wish Except To See It As It Is, And Without Any Belief That What It Is Must Be Determined By Some Relation, Positive Or Negative, To What We Should Like It To Be, Or To What We Can Easily Imagine It To Be.

Inferences Of Science And Common Sense Differ From Those Of Deductive Logic And Mathematics In A Very Important Respect, Namely, When The Premises Are True And The Reasoning Correct, The Conclusion Is Only Probable.

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

Every Housemaid Expects At Least Once A Week As Much Excitement As Would Have Lasted A Jane Austen Heroine Throughout A Whole Novel.

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

Fear Is The Main Source Of Superstition, And One Of The Main Sources Of Cruelty. To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

I Do So Hate To Leave This World.

What Makes A Free Thinker Is Not His Beliefs, But The Way In Which He Holds Them. If He Holds Them Because His Elders Told Him They Were True When He Was Young, Or If He Holds Them Because If He Did Not He Would Be Unhappy, His Thought Is Not Free; But If He Holds Them Because, After Careful Thought, He Finds A Balance In Their Favor, Then His Thought Is Free, However Odd His Conclusions May Seem.

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.

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.

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

I Don't Care For The Applause One Gets By Saying What Others Are Thinking; I Want Actually To Change People's Thoughts. Power Over People's Minds Is The Main Personal Desire Of My Life; And This Sort Of Power Is Not Acquired By Saying Popular Things.

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.

The Fundamental Defect Of Fathers, In Our Competitive Society, Is That They Want Their Children To Be A Credit To Them.

It Can Be Shown That A Mathematical Web Of Some Kind Can Be Woven About Any Universe Containing Several Objects. The Fact That Our Universe Lends Itself To Mathematical Treatment Is Not A Fact Of Any Great Philosophical Significance.

I Read Zuleika Dobson With Pleasure. It Represents The Oxford That The Two World Wars Have Destroyed With A Charm That Is Not Likely To Be Reproduced Anywhere In The World For The Next Thousand Years.

I Have Throughout Been Curious About How Much We Can Be Said To Know And With What Degree Of Certainty Or Doubtfulness.

Unless A Man Has Been Taught What To Do With Success After Getting It, The Achievement Of It Must Inevitably Leave Him A Prey To Boredom.

Science Tells Us What We Can Know, But What We Can Know Is Little, And If We Forget How Much We Cannot Know We Become Insensitive To Many Things Of Great Importance.

A Man Who Has Once Perceived, However Temporarily And However Briefly, What Makes Greatness Of Soul, Can No Longer Be Happy If He Allows Himself To Be Petty, Self-seeking, Troubled By Trivial Misfortunes, Dreading What Fate May Have In Store For Him. The Man Capable Of Greatness Of Soul Will Open Wide The Windows Of His Mind, Letting The Winds Blow Freely Upon It From Every Portion Of The Universe.

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.

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

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

[the Church] Is In Its Major Part An Opponent Still Of Progress And Improvement In All The Ways That Diminish Suffering In The World, Because It Has Chosen To Label As Morality A Certain Narrow Set Of Rules Of Conduct Which Have Nothing To Do With Human Happiness; And When You Say That This Or That Ought To Be Done Because It Would Make For Human Happiness, They Think That Has Nothing To Do With The Matter At All. "what Has Human Happiness To Do With Morals? The Object Of Morals Is Not To Make People Happy.

Beware The Man Of The Single Book

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

There Was, I Think, Never Any Reason To Believe In Any Innate Superiority Of The Male, Except His Superior Muscle.

The Good Life Is One Inspired By Love And Guided By Knowledge.

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

Any Pleasure That Does No Harm To Other People Is To Be Valued.

Modern American Politicians Have The Same Cowardice About Denying An Equally Bloodthirsty Even Sillier God, Jehovah. None Of Us Would Seriously Consider The Possibility That All The Gods Of Homer Really Exist... I Think That All Of Us Would Say In Regard To Those Gods That We Were Atheists. In Regard To The Christian God, I Should, I Think, Take Exactly The Same Line.

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.

To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

We Do Not Like To Be Robbed Of An Enemy; We Want Someone To Hate When We Suffer. It Is So Depressing To Think That We Suffer Because We Are Fools; Yet, Taking Mankind In The Mass, That Is The Truth.

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

No Man Who Believes That All Is For The Best In This Suffering World Can Keep His Ethical Values Unimpaired, Since He Is Always Having To Find Excuses For Pain And Misery.

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.

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

Thought Is Great And Swift And Free, The Light Of The World, The Chief Glory Of Man.

Passive Acceptance Of The Teacher's Wisdom Is Easy To Most Boys And Girls. It Involves No Effort Of Independent Thought, And Seems Rational Because The Teacher Knows More Than His Pupils; It Is Moreover The Way To Win The Favour Of The Teacher Unless He Is A Very Exceptional Man. Yet The Habit Of Passive Acceptance Is A Disastrous One In Later Life. It Causes Man To Seek And To Accept A Leader, And To Accept As A Leader Whoever Is Established In That Position.

Emphatic And Reiterated Assertion, Especially During Childhood, Produces In Most People A Belief So Firm As To Have A Hold Even Over The Unconscious.

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.

Against The Vast Majority Of My Countrymen, Even At This Moment, In The Name Of Humanity And Civilization, I Protest Against Our Share In The Destruction Of Germany. A Month Ago Europe Was A Peaceful Comity Of Nations; If An Englishman Killed A German, He Was Hanged. Now, If An Englishman Kills A German, Or If A German Kills An Englishman, He Is A Patriot, Who Has Deserved Well Of His Country.

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.

To Be Happy In This World, Especially When Youth Is Past, It Is Necessary To Feel Oneself Not Merely An Isolated Individual Whose Day Will Soon Be Over, But Part Of The Stream Of Life Flowing On From The First Germ To The Remote And Unknown Future.

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

Memory Demands An Image.

Whoever Wishes To Become A Philosopher Must Learn Not To Be Frightened By Absurdities.

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.

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?

As A Philosopher, If I Were Speaking To A Purely Philosophic Audience I Should Say That I Ought To Describe Myself As An Agnostic, Because I Do Not Think That There Is A Conclusive Argument By Which One Can Prove That There Is Not A God. On The Other Hand, If I Am To Convey The Right Impression To The Ordinary Man In The Street I Think That I Ought To Say That I Am An Atheist, Because, When I Say That I Cannot Prove That There Is Not A God, I Ought To Add Equally That I Cannot Prove That There Are Not The Homeric Gods.

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

Laughter Is The Most Inexpensive And Most Effective Wonder Drug. Laughter Is A Universal Medicine.

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.

Truth Is For The Gods; From Our Human Point Of View, It Is An Ideal, Towards Which We Can Approximate, But Which We Cannot Hope To Reach.

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.

Civilized Life Has Altogether Grown Too Tame, And, If It Is To Be Stable, It Must Provide A Harmless Outlets For The Impulses Which Our Remote Ancestors Satisfied In Hunting.

The Modern Man Thinks That Everything Ought To Be Done For The Sake Of Something Else, And Never For Its Own Sake.

The Life Of Man Is A Long March Through The Night, Surrounded By Invisible Foes, Tortured By Weariness And Pain, Towards A Goal That Few Can Hope To Reach, And Where None May Tarry Long.

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

Nine-tenths Of The Activities Of A Modern Government Are Harmful; Therefore The Worse They Are Performed, The Better.

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

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.

I Am Looking Forward Very Much To Getting Back To Cambridge, And Being Able To Say What I Think And Not To Mean What I Say: Two Things Which At Home Are Impossible. Cambridge Is One Of The Few Places Where One Can Talk Unlimited Nonsense And Generalities Without Anyone Pulling One Up Or Confronting One With Them When One Says Just The Opposite The Next Day.

I Am Sometimes Shocked By The Blasphemies Of Those Who Think Themselves Pious.

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

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

Patriotism Which Has The Quality Of Intoxication Is A Danger Not Only To Its Native Land But To The World, And "my Country Never Wrong" Is An Even More Dangerous Maxim Than "my Country, Right Or Wrong."

Only In Thought Is Man A God; In Action And Desire We Are The Slaves Of Circumstance.

To Write Tragedy, A Man Must Feel Tragedy. To Feel Tragedy, A Man Must Be Aware Of The World In Which He Lives. Not Only With His Mind, But With His Blood And Sinews.

Religions, Which Condemn The Pleasures Of Sense, Drive Men To Seek The Pleasures Of Power. Throughout History Power Has Been The Vice Of The Ascetic.

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

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

The Fundamental Cause Of The Trouble Is That In The Modern World The Stupid Are Cocksure While The Intelligent Are Full Of Doubt. Even Those Of The Intelligent Who Believe That They Have A Nostrum Are Too Individualistic To Combine With Other Intelligent Men From Whom They Differ On Minor Points.

Science Has Made Unrestricted National Sovereignty Incompatible With Human Survival. The Only Possibilities Are Now World Government Or Death.

World Government

I've Always Thought Respectable People Scoundrels, And I Look Anxiously At My Face Every Morning For Signs Of My Becoming A Scoundrel.

Boredom Is... A Vital Problem For The Moralist, Since Half The Sins Of Mankind Are Caused By The Fear Of It.

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

We Ought To Look The World Frankly In The Face.

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid, And However Unpleasant The Truth May Be, It Is Better To Face It Once And For All, To Get Used To It, And To Proceed To Build Your Life In Accordance With It.

With The Introduction Of Agriculture Mankind Entered Upon A Long Period Of Meanness, Misery, And Madness, From Which They Are Only Now Being Freed By The Beneficent Operation Of The Machine.

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

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.

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.

In All Affairs It's A Healthy Thing Now And Then To Hang A Question Mark On The Things You Have Long Taken For Granted.

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

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

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.

Right Conduct Can Never, Except By Some Rare Accident, Be Promoted By Ignorance Or Hindered By Knowledge.

When You Meet With Opposition, Even If It Should Be From Your Husband Or Your Children, Endeavor To Overcome It By Argument And Not By Authority, For A Victory Dependent Upon Authority Is Unreal And Illusory.

All The Labor Of All The Ages, All The Devotion, All The Inspiration, All The Noonday Brightness Of Human Genius Are Destined To Extinction. So Now, My Friends, If That Is True, And It Is True, What Is The Point?

When There Are Rational Grounds For An Opinion, People Are Content To Set Them Forth And Wait For Them To Operate. In Such Cases, People Do Not Hold Their Opinions With Passion; They Hold Them Calmly, And Set Forth Their Reasons Quietly. The Opinions That Are Held With Passion Are Always Those For Which No Good Ground Exists; Indeed The Passion Is The Measure Of The Holder's Lack Of Rational Conviction.

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.

The Search For Something Permanent Is One Of The Deepest Of The Instincts Leading Men To Philosophy.

If Everything Must Have A Cause, Then God Must Have A Cause. If There Can Be Anything Without A Cause, It May Just As Well Be The World As God, So That There Cannot Be Any Validity In That Argument... The Idea That Things Must Have A Beginning Is Really Due To The Poverty Of Our Imagination.

It Is Essential To Happiness That Our Way Of Living Should Spring From Our Own Deep Impulses And Not From The Accidental Tastes And Desires Of Those Who Happen To Be Our Neighbors, Or Even Our Relations.

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.

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

A Fanatical Belief In Democracy Makes Democratic Institutions Impossible.

Change Is One Thing, Progress Is Another.

It's Easy To Fall In Love. The Hard Part Is Finding Someone To Catch You.

Falling In Love

New Relationship

I Can't Tell Whether I Am Living In A Dream Or A Nightmare.

The Best Life Is The One In Which The Creative Impulses Play The Largest Part And The Possessive Impulses The Smallest.

We Know That The Exercise Of Virtue Should Be Its Own Reward, And It Seems To Follow That The Enduring Of It On The Part Of The Patient Should Be Its Own Punishment.

If One Man Offers You Democracy And Another Offers You A Bag Of Grain, At What Stage Of Starvation Do You Prefer The Grain To The Vote?

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Frederick Reines

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