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

-Bertrand Russell

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Physics Is Mathematical Not

Bertrand Russell

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

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

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?

The True Spirit Of Delight...is To Be Found In Mathematics As Surely As In Poetry.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

No Other Organization Rouses Anything Like The Loyalty Aroused By The National State. And The Chief Activity Of The State Is Preparation For Large-scale Homicide.

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.

Thinking You Know When In Fact You Don't Is A Fatal Mistake, To Which We Are All Prone

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

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

The Institution Of Representative Government To Us Seems An Essential Part Of Democracy, But The Ancients Never Thought Of It. Its Immense Merit Was That It Enabled A Large Constituency To Exert Indirect Power, And Thus Made Possible The Distribution Of Political Responsibility Throughout The Great States Of Modern Times.

[industrialism's Soon Diminishing] Capacity To Supply Human Needs Could Be Prevented If Men Exercised Any Restraint Or Foresight In Their Present Frenzied Exploitation.

Every Great Idea Starts Out As A Blasphemy.

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.

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

It Seems To Us Unwise To Have Insisted On Teaching Geometry To The Younger Dionysius, Tyrant Of Syracuse, In Order To Make Him A Good King, But From Plato's Point Of View It Was Essential. He Was Sufficiently Pythagorean To Think That Without Mathematics No True Wisdom Is Possible.

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.'

Folly Is Perennial And Yet The Human Race Has Survived.

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

Who Ever Heard A Theologian Preface His Creed, Or A Politician Conclude His Speech With An Estimate Of The Probable Error Of His Opinion?

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

All The Conditions Of Happiness Are Realized In The Life Of The Man Of Science.

I Often Long To . . . Give Up My Life To Love Of My Neighbour. This Is Really A Temptation.

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

Righteous Indignation

Without Civic Morality Communities Perish; Without Personal Morality Their Survival Has No Value.

Love And Knowledge, So Far As They Were Possible, Led Upward Toward The Heavens. But Always Pity Brought Me Back To Earth. Echoes Of Cries Of Pain Reverberate In My Heart. Children In Famine, Victims Tortured By Oppressors, Helpless Old People A Burden To Their Sons, And The Whole World Of Loneliness, Poverty, And Pain Make A Mockery Of What Human Life Should Be. I Long To Alleviate This Evil, But I Cannot, And I Too Suffer.

It Is A Curious And Painful Fact That Almost All The Completely Futile Treatments That Have Been Believed In During The Long History Of Medical Folly Have Been Such As Caused Acute Suffering To The Patient. When Anesthetics Were Discovered, Pious People Considered Them An Attempt To Evade The Will Of God. It Was Pointed Out, However, That When God Extracted Adam's Rib He Put Him Into A Deep Sleep. This Proved That Anesthetics Are All Right For Men; Women, However, Ought To Suffer, Because Of The Curse Of Eve.

The First Step In A Fascist Movement Is The Combination Under An Energetic Leader Of A Number Of Men Who Possess More Than The Average Share Of Leisure, Brutality, And Stupidity. The Next Step Is To Fascinate Fools And Muzzle The Intelligent, By Emotional Excitement On The One Hand And Terrorism On The Other.

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

Fervent Religious Believers Sacrifice Pleasures Of The Body, But Instead Enjoy Pleasures Of The Mind, Including The Joy Of Knowing That Those Men Who Didn't Follow Their Religion Would Be Tortured For Eternity.

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

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.

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

Logic Must No More Admit A Unicorn Than Zoology Can.

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

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

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.

Even If We Could Be Certain That One Of The World's Religions Were Perfectly True, Given The Sheer Number Of Conflicting Faiths On Offer, Every Believer Should Expect Damnation Purely As A Matter Of Probability.

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

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

The Newspapers At One Time Said That I Was Dead But After Carefully Examining The Evidence I Came To The Conclusion That This Statement Was False.

Those Whose Lives Are Fruitful To Themselves, To Their Friends, Or To The World Are Inspired By Hope And Sustained By Joy: They See In Imagination The Things That Might Be And The Way In Which They Are To Be Brought Into Existence.

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

Much That Passes As Idealism Is Disguised Hatred Or Disguised Love Of Power.

Idealism And Realism

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.

A Life Devoted To Science Is Therefore A Happy Life, And Its Happiness Is Derived From The Very Best Sources That Are Open To Dwellers On This Troubled And Passionate Planet.

Philosophy Arises From An Unusually Obstinate Attempt To Arrive At Real Knowledge. What Passes For Knowledge In Ordinary Life Suffers From Three Defects: It Is Cocksure, Vague And Self-contradictory. The First Step Towards Philosophy Consists In Becoming Aware Of These Defects, Not In Order To Rest Content With A Lazy Scepticism, But In Order To Substitute An Amended Kind Of Knowledge Which Shall Be Tentative, Precise And Self-consistent.

More And More People Are Becoming Unable To Accept Traditional [religious] Beliefs. If They Think That, Apart From These Beliefs, There Is No Reason For Kindly Behaviour, The Results May Be Needlessly Unfortunate. That Is Why It Is Important To Show That No Supernatural Reasons Are Needed To Make [people] Kind And To Prove That Only Through Kindness Can The Human Race Achieve Happiness.

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.

While The Dogmatist Is Harmful, The Sceptic Is Useless ...; One Is Certain Of Knowing, The Other Of Not Knowing. What Philosophy Should Dissipate Is Certainty, Whether Of Knowledge Or Of Ignorance. Knowledge Is Not So Precise A Concept As Is Commonly Thought. Instead Of Saying 'i Know This', We Ought To Say 'i More Or Less Know Something More Or Less Like This'. ... Knowledge In Practical Affairs Has Not The Certainty Or The Precision Of Arithmetic.

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

Humanistic Ethics Is Based On The Principle That Only Humans Themselves Can Determine The Criterion For Virtue And Not An Authority Transcending Us.

Change Is One Thing, Progress Is Another.

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

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

Nine-tenths Of The Appeal Of Pornography Is Due To The Indecent Feelings Concerning Sex Which Moralists Inculcate In The Young; The Other Tenth Is Physiological, And Will Occur In One Way Or Another Whatever The State Of The Law May Be.

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.

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.

Literature Is Inexhaustible, With Every Book A Homage To Infinity

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

A European Who Goes To New York And Chicago Sees The Future... When He Goes To Asia He Sees The Past.

On The One Hand, Philosophy Is To Keep Us Thinking About Things That We May Come To Know, And On The Other Hand To Keep Us Modestly Aware Of How Much That Seems Like Knowledge Isn't Knowledge

Extreme Hopes Are Born Of Extreme Misery, And In Such A World Hopes Could Only Be Irrational.

Our Instinctive Emotions Are Those That We Have Inherited From A Much More Dangerous World, And Contain, Therefore, A Larger Portion Of Fear Than They Should.

Dangerous World

If A Law Were Passed Giving Six Months To Every Writer Of A First Book, Only The Good Ones Would Do It.

Although It Is A Gloomy View To Suppose That Life Will Die Out, Sometimes When I Contemplate The Things That People Do With Their Lives I Think It Is Almost A Consolation

The Time Has Come, Or Is About To Come, When Only Large-scale Civil Disobedience, Which Should Be Nonviolent, Can Save The Populations From The Universal Death Which Their Governments Are Preparing For Them.

The More You Complain The Longer God Lets You Live

Funny Bumper Sticker

Thomas Aquinas States Parenthetically, As Something Entirely Obvious, That Men Are More Rational Than Women. For My Part, I See No Evidence Of This.

The Late F. W. H. Myers Used To Tell How He Asked A Man At A Dinner Table What He Thought Would Happen To Him When He Died. The Man Tried To Ignore The Question, But, On Being Pressed, Replied: "oh Well, I Suppose I Shall Inherit Eternal Bliss, But I Wish You Wouldn't Talk About Such Unpleasant Subjects."

Ants And Savages Put Strangers To Death.

The Demand For Certainty Is One Which Is Natural To Man, But Is Nevertheless An Intellectual Vice. If You Take Your Children For A Picnic On A Doubtful Day, They Will Demand A Dogmatic Answer As To Whether It Will Be Fine Or Wet, And Be Disappointed In You When You Cannot Be Sure.

To Understand A Name You Must Be Acquainted With The Particular Of Which It Is A Name.

Machines Have Altered Our Way Of Life, But Not Our Instincts. Consequently, There Is Maladjustment.

In The Revolt Against Idealism, The Ambiguities Of The Word Experience Have Been Perceived, With The Result That Realists Have More And More Avoided The Word.

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.

William James Describes A Man Who Got The Experience From Laughing-gas; Whenever He Was Under Its Influence, He Knew The Secret Of The Universe, But When He Came To, He Had Forgotten It. At Last, With Immense Effort, He Wrote Down The Secret Before The Vision Had Faded. When Completely Recovered, He Rushed To See What He Had Written. It Was 'a Smell Of Petroleum Prevails Throughout'.

As For Earthquakes, Though They Were Still Formidable, They Were So Interesting That Men Of Science Could Hardly Regret Them.

The Fact That All Mathematics Is Symbolic Logic Is One Of The Greatest Discoveries Of Our Age; And When This Fact Has Been Established, The Remainder Of The Principles Of Mathematics Consists Of The Analysis Of Symbolic Logic Itself.

Mathematical Logic

I Mean By Intellectual Integrity The Habit Of Deciding Vexed Questions In Accordance With The Evidence, Or Of Leaving Them Undecided Where The Evidence Is Inconclusive. This Virtue, Though It Is Underestimated By Almost All Adherents Of Any System Of Dogma, Is To My Mind Of The Very Greatest Social Importance And Far More Likely To Benefit The World Than Christianity Or Any Other System Of Organized Beliefs.

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

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

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.

Self-respect Will Keep A Man From Being Abject When He Is In The Power Of Enemies, And Will Enable Him To Feel That He May Be In The Right When The World Is Against Him.

At The Age Of Eleven, I Began Euclid, With My Brother As My Tutor. This Was One Of The Great Events Of My Life, As Dazzling As First Love. I Had Not Imagined There Was Anything So Delicious In The World. From That Moment Until I Was Thirty-eight, Mathematics Was My Chief Interest And My Chief Source Of Happiness.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Love As A Relation Between Men And Women Was Ruined By The Desire To Make Sure Of The Legitimacy Of Children.

It Is Only Theory That Makes Men Completely Incautious.

We Are Condemned To Kill Time, Thus We Die Bit By Bit. - Octavio Paz The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

Opinions Which Justify Cruelty Are Inspired By Cruel Impulses.

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

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.

Thee Might Observe Incidentally That If The State Paid For Child-bearing It Might And Ought To Require A Medical Certificate That The Parents Were Such As To Give A Reasonable Result Of A Healthy Child -- This Would Afford A Very Good Inducement To Some Sort Of Care For The Race, And Gradually As Public Opinion Became Educated By The Law, It Might React On The Law And Make That More Stringent, Until One Got To Some State Of Things In Which There Would Be A Little Genuine Care For The Race, Instead Of The Present Haphazard Higgledy-piggledy Ways.

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.

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

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

Everybody Can Do Something Toward Creating In His Own Environment Kindly Feelings Rather Than Anger, Reasonableness Rather Than Hysteria, Happiness Rather Than Misery.

Our Use Of The Phrase 'the Dark Ages' To Cover The Period From 600 To 1000 Marks Our Undue Concentration On Western Europe. [...] From India To Spain, The Brilliant Civilisation Of Islam Flourished. What Was Lost To Christendom At This Time Was Not Lost To Civilisation, But Quite The Contrary. [...] To Us It Seems That West-european Civilisation Is Civilisation, But This Is A Narrow View.

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 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.

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

When White Men First Effect Contact With Some Unspoilt Race Of Savages, They Offer Them All Kinds Of Benefits, From The Light Of The Gospel To Pumpkin Pie. These, However, Much As We May Regret It, Most Savages Receive With Indifference. What They Really Value Among The Gifts That We Bring To Them Is Intoxicating Liquor Which Enables Them, For The First Time In Their Lives, To Have The Illusion For A Few Brief Moments That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead.

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

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.

The Social Psychologist Of The Future Will Have A Number Of Classes Of School Children On Whom They Will Try Different Methods Of Producing An Unshakable Conviction That Snow Is Black. When The Technique Has Been Perfected, Every Government That Has Been In Charge Of Education For More Than One Generation Will Be Able To Control Its Subjects Securely Without The Need Of Armies Or Policemen.

You, Your Families, Your Friends And Your Countries Are To Be Exterminated By The Common Decision Of A Few Brutal But Powerful Men. To Please These Men, All The Private Affections, All The Public Hopes, All That Has Been Achieved In Art, And Knowledge And Thought And All That Might Be Achieved Hereafter Is To Be Wiped Out Forever. Our Ruined Lifeless Planet Will Continue For Countless Ages To Circle Aimlessly Round The Sun Unredeemed By The Joys And Loves, The Occasional Wisdom And The Power To Create Beauty Which Have Given Value To Human Life.

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

Christianity Offers Reasons For Not Fearing Death Or The Universe, And In So Doing It Fails To Teach Adequately The Virtue Of Courage.

Language Serves Not Only To Express Thought But To Make Possible Thoughts Which Could Not Exist Without It.

It Is In Our Hearts That Evil Lies, And It Is From Our Hearts That It Must Be Plucked Out.

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

When Considering Marriage One Should Ask Oneself This Question; 'will I Be Able To Talk With This Person Into Old Age?' Everything Else Is Transitory, The Most Time Is Spent In Conversation.

But I Simply Can't Stand A View Limited To This Earth, I Feel Life Is So Small Unless It Has Windows Into Other Worlds...i Like Mathematics Largely Because It Is Not Human.

We Believe, First And Foremost, What Makes Us Feel That We Are Fine Fellows.

A Generation That Cannot Endure Boredom Will Be A Generation Of Little Men, Of Men Unduly Divorced From The Slow Process Of Nature, Of Men In Whom Every Vital Impulse Slowly Withers As Though They Were Cut Flowers In A Vase.

There Have Been Poverty, Pestilence, And Famine, Which Were Due To Man's Inadequate Mastery Of Nature. There Have Been Wars, Oppressions And Tortures Which Have Been Due To Men's Hostility To Their Fellow Men.

Our Beliefs Are, However, Often Contrary To Fact.

It Was The Duty Of Wives To Submit To Husbands, Not Of Husbands To Submit To Wives. . . Men Have Stronger Muscles Than Women.

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

Religion May In Most Of Its Forms Be Defined As The Belief That The Gods Are On The Side Of The Government.

One's Work Is Never So Bad As It Appears On Bad Days, Nor So Good As It Appears On Good Days.

Owing To The Identification Of Religion With Virtue, Together With The Fact That The Most Religious Men Are Not The Most Intelligent, A Religious Education Gives Courage To The Stupid To Resist The Authority Of Educated Men, As Has Happened, For Example, Where The Teaching Of Evolution Has Been Made Illegal. So Far As I Can Remember, There Is Not One Word In The Gospels In Praise Of Intelligence; And In This Respect Ministers Of Religion Follow Gospel Authority More Closely Than In Some Others.

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

Righteousness Cannot Be Born Until Self-righteousness Is Dead.

I Have Lived In The Pursuit Of A Vision, Both Personal And Social. Personal: To Care For What Is Noble, For What Is Beautiful, For What Is Gentle; To Allow Moments Of Insight To Give Wisdom At More Mundane Times. Social: To See In Imagination The Society That Is To Be Created, Where Individuals Grow Freely, And Where Hate And Greed And Envy Die Because There Is Nothing To Nourish Them. These Things I Believe, And The World, For All Its Horrors, Has Left Me Unshaken.

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

But It Is Just This Characteristic Of Simplicity In The Laws Of Nature Hitherto Discovered Which It Would Be Fallacious To Generalize, For It Is Obvious That Simplicity Has Been A Part Cause Of Their Discovery, And Can, Therefore, Give No Ground For The Supposition That Other Undiscovered Laws Are Equally Simple.

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.

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.

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

Philosophy, For Plato, Is A Kind Of Vision, The 'vision Of Truth'...everyone Who Has Done Any Kind Of Creative Work Has Experienced, In A Greater Or Less Degree, The State Of Mind In Which, After Long Labour, Truth Or Beauty Appears, Or Seems To Appear, In A Sudden Glory - It May Only Be About Some Small Matter, Or It May Be About The Universe. I Think That Most Of The Best Creative Work, In Art, In Science, In Literature, And In Philosophy, Has Been A Result Of Just Such A Moment.

The Painter Has To Unlearn The Habit Of Thinking That Things Seem To Have The Color Which Common Sense Says They 'really' Have, And To Learn The Habit Of Seeing Things As They Appear.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Infliction Of Cruelty With A Good Conscience Is A Delight To Moralists - That Is Why They Invented Hell.

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.

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.

The Human Animal, Like Others, Is Adapted To A Certain Amount Of Struggle For Life [and] The Mere Absence Of Effort From His Life Removes An Essential Ingredient Of Happiness. [. . .] He Forgets That To Be Without Some Of The Things You Want Is An Indispensable Part Of Happiness.

[freedom] Is The Greatest Of Political Goods. I Do Not Say Freedom Is The Greatest Of All Goods: The Best Things Come From Within They Are Such Things As Creative Art, And Love, And Thought. Such Things Can Be Helped Or Hindered By Political Conditions, But Not Actually Produced By Them; And Freedom Is, Both In Itself And In Its Relation To These Other Goods The Best Thing That Political And Economic Conditions Can Secure.

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.

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.

Our Great Democracies Still Tend To Think That A Stupid Man Is More Likely To Be Honest Than A Clever Man.

All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation.

St. Paul Introduced An Entirely Novel View Of Marriage, That It Existed Primarily To Prevent The Sin Of Fornication. It Is Just As If One Were To Maintain That The Sole Reason For Baking Bread Is To Prevent People From Stealing Cake.

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

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

More Important Than The Curriculum Is The Question Of The Methods Of Teaching And The Spirit In Which The Teaching Is Given

Work Is Of Two Kinds: First, Altering The Position Of Matter At Or Near The Earth's Surface Relative To Other Matter; Second, Telling Other People To Do So.

You Could Live Without The Opera Singer, But Not Without The Services Of The Baker. On This Ground You Might Say That The Baker Performs A Greater Service; But No Lover Of Music Would Agree.

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

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

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

Religions Which Have Any Very Strong Hold Over Men's Actions Have Generally Some Instinctive Basis.

A Life Which Goes Excessively Against Natural Impulse Is... Likely To Involve Effects Of Strain That May Be Quite As Bad As Indulgence In Forbidden Impulses Would Have Been. People Who Live A Life Which Is Unnatural Beyond A Point Are Likely To Be Filled With Envy, Malice And Uncharitableness.

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.

Organic Life, We Are Told, Has Developed Gradually From The Protozoon To The Philosopher, And This Development, We Are Assured, Is Indubitably An Advance. Unfortunately It Is The Philosopher, Not The Protozoon, Who Gives Us This Assurance.

It Would Have Been Very Much Better For The World If Britain Had Remained Neutral And The Germans Had Won A Quick Victory. We Should Not Have Had Either The Nazis Or The Communists If That Had Happened.

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.

Most People Believe In God Because They Have Been Taught From Early Infancy To Do It, And That Is The Main Reason. Then I Think That The Next Most Powerful Reason Is The Wish For Safety.

What Has Human Happiness To Do With Morals? The Object Of Morals Is Not To Make People Happy.

The Best Authorities Are Unanimous In Saying That A War With H-bombs Might Possibly Put An End To The Human Race. It Is Feared That If Many H-bombs Are Used There Will Be Universal Death, Sudden Only For A Minority, But For The Majority A Slow Torture Of Disease And Disintegration.

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 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.

There's A Bible On That Shelf There. But I Keep It Next To Voltaire - Poison And Antidote.

Of These Austerer Virtues The Love Of Truth Is The Chief, And In Mathematics, More Than Elsewhere, The Love Of Truth May Find Encouragement For Waning Faith. Every Great Study Is Not Only An End In Itself, But Also A Means Of Creating And Sustaining A Lofty Habit Of Mind; And This Purpose Should Be Kept Always In View Throughout The Teaching And Learning Of Mathematics.

One Must Care About A World One Will Not See.

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

Marx's Father Became A Christian When Marx Was A Little Boy, And Some, At Least, Of The Dogmas He Must Have Then Accepted Seem To Have Born Fruit In His Son's Psychology.

Ignore Fact And Reason, Live Entirely In The World Of Your Own Fantastic And Myth-producing Passions; Do This Whole-heartedly And With Conviction, And You Will Become One Of The Prophets Of Your Age.

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

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

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.

There Is No Difference Between Someone Who Eats Too Little And Sees Heaven And Someone Who Drinks Too Much And Sees Snakes.

Boys And Young Men Acquire Readily The Moral Sentiments Of Their Social Milieu, Whatever These Sentiments May Be.

Indemnity For The Past And Security For The Future.

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

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.

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

Herd Pressure Is To Be Judged By Two Things: First, Its Intensity, And Second, Its Direction.

The Teacher, Like The Artist, The Philosopher, And The Man Of Letters, Can Only Perform His Work Adequately If He Feels Himself To Be An Individual Directed By An Inner Creative Impulse, Not Dominated And Fettered By An Outside Authority.

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.

...i Am Afraid That Education Is Conceived More In Terms Of Indoctrination By Most School Officials Than In Terms Of Enlightenment. My Own Belief Is That Education Must Be Subversive If It Is To Be Meaningful. By This I Mean That It Must Challenge All The Things We Take For Granted, Examine All Accepted Assumptions, Tamper With Every Sacred Cow, And Instill A Desire To Question And Doubt. Without This The Mere Instruction To Memorise Data Is Empty. The Attempt To Enforce Conventional Mediocrity On The Young Is Criminal.

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not. I Am, However, Quite Certain That I Am Having Certain Experiences, Whether They Be Those Of A Dream Or Those Of Waking Life.

Scientific Societies Are As Yet In Their Infancy. It Is To Be Expected That Advances In Physiology And Psychology Will Give Governments Much More Control Over Individual Mentality Than They Now Have Even In Totalitarian Countries. Fitche Laid It Down That Education Should Aim At Destroying Free Will, So That, After Pupils Have Left School, They Shall Be Incapable, Throughout The Rest Of Their Lives, Of Thinking Or Acting Otherwise Than As Their Schoolmasters Would Have Wished.

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.

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.

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Giuseppe Garibaldi

Solomon Ibn Gabirol

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