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So Long As There Is Death There Will Be Sorrow, And So Long As There Is Sorrow It Can Be No Part Of The Duty Of Human Beings To Increase Its Amount, In Spite Of The Fact That A Few Rare Spirits Know How To Transmute It.

-Bertrand Russell

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So Long As There

Bertrand Russell

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So Long As There Is Death There Will Be Sorrow, And So Long As There Is Sorrow It Can Be No Part Of The Duty Of Human Beings To Increase Its Amount, In Spite Of The Fact That A Few Rare Spirits Know How To Transmute It.

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[regarding] The Convention That Clergymen Are More Virtuous Than Other Men. Any Average Selection Of Mankind, Set Apart And Told That It Excels The Rest In Virtue, Must Tend To Sink Below The Average.

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.

An Educator Should Think Of A Child As A Gardener Thinks Of A Plant, As Something To Be Made To Grow By Having The Right Soil And The Right Amount Of Water. If Your Roses Fail To Bloom, It Does Not Occur To You To Whip Them, But You Try To Find Out What Has Been Amiss In Your Treatment Of Them. ... The Important Thing Is What The Children Do, And Not What They Do Not Do. And What They Do, If It Is To Have Value, Must Be A Spontaneous Expression Of Their Own Vital Energy.

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.

One Of The Most Painful Circumstances Of Recent Advances In Science Is That Each One Makes Us Know Less Than We Thought We Did

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Everything Is Vague To A Degree You Do Not Realize Till You Have Tried To Make It Precise.

For A Good Notation Has A Subtlety And Suggestiveness Which At Times Make It Seem Almost Like A Live Teacher.

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

The Three Main Extra-rational Activities In Modern Life Are Religion, War, And Love. All These Are Extra-rational, But Love Is Not Anti-rational, That Is To Say, A Reasonable Man May Reasonably Rejoice In Its Existence

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Raw Fruits Of The Earth Were Made For Human Sustenance. Even The White Tails Of Rabbits, According To Some Theologians, Have A Purpose, Namely To Make It Easier For Sportsmen To Shoot Them. There Are, It Is True, Some Inconveniences: Lions And Tigers Are Too Fierce, The Summer Is Too Hot, And The Winter Too Cold. But These Things Only Began After Adam Ate The Apple; I Before That, All Animals Were Vegetarians, And The Season Was Always Spring. If Only Adam Had Been Content With Peaches And Nectarines, Grapes And Pears And Pineapples, These Blessings Would Still Be Ours.

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.

Great God In Boots! – The Ontological Argument Is Sound!

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

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

I Greatly Doubt Whether The Men Who Become Pirate Chiefs Are Those Who Are Filled With Retrospective Terror Of Their Fathers, Or Whether Napoleon , At Austerlitz, Really Felt That He Was Getting Even With Madame Mère. I Know Nothing Of The Mother Of Attila , But I Rather Suspect That She Spoilt The Little Darling, Who Subsequently Found The World Irritating Because It Sometimes Resisted His Whims.

Logic Must No More Admit A Unicorn Than Zoology Can.

It Is Only Through Imagination That Men Become Aware Of What The World Might Be; Without It, ‘progress’ Would Become Mechanical And Trivial.

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.

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.

None Of Our Beliefs Are Quite True; All Have At Least A Penumbra Of Vagueness And Error.

Formality Thus The Absence Of All Mention Of Particular Things Or Properties In Logic Or Pure Mathematics Is A Necessary Result Of The Fact That This Study Is, As We Say, "purely Formal".

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

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

A Smell Of Petroleum Prevails Throughout.

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

Affection Cannot Be Created; It Can Only Be Liberated.

Obviousness Is Always The Enemy Of Correctness.

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

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.

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

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

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

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

Admit At Least One Painful Truth To Yourself Every Day. Teach Yourself To Feel That Life Would Still Be Worth Living Even If You Were Not Immeasurably Superior To All Your Friends. Exercises Of This Sort, Prolonged Through Several Years, Will At Last Enable You To Admit Facts Without Flinching, And Will, In So Doing, Free You From The Empire Of Fear Over A Very Large Field.

Shakespeare . . . If He Does Not Give You Delight, You Had Better Ignore Him [if You Can].

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.

One Who Believes, As I Do, That The Free Intellect Is The Chief Engine Of Human Progress, Cannot But Be Fundamentally Opposed To Bolshevism, As Much As To The Church Of Rome.

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

We Must Be Skeptical Even Of Our Skepticism.

Is A Man What He Seems To The Astronomer, A Tiny Lump Of Impure Carbon And Water Crawling Impotently On A Small And Unimportant Planet? Or Is He What He Appears To Hamlet? Is He Perhaps Both As Once?

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

Without Effort And Change, Human Life Cannot Remain Good. It Is Not A Finished Utopia That We Ought To Desire, But A World Where Imagination And Hope Are Alive And Active.

Orthodoxy Is The Death Of Intelligence.

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

You Must Believe That You Can Help Bring About A Better World.

Marriage Is For Women The Commonest Mode Of Livelihood, And The Total Amount Of Undesired Sex Endured By Women Is Probably Greater In Marriage Than In Prostitution.

Pure Mathematics Consists Entirely Of Assertions To The Effect That, If Such And Such A Proposition Is True Of Anything, Then Suchand Such Another Proposition Is True Of That Thing.... Thus Mathematics May Be Defined As The Subject In Which We Never Know What We Are Talking About, Nor Whether What We Are Saying Is True.

In The Great Depression, Things Could Only Be Set Right By Causing The Idle Plant To Work Again . . . Roosevelt . . . Spent Billions Of Public Money And Created A Huge Public Debt, But By So Doing He Revived Production And Brought His Country Out Of The Depression. Businessmen, Who In Spite Of Such A Sharp Lesson Continued To Believe In Old-fashioned Economics, Were Infinitely Shocked, And Although Roosevelt Saved Them From Ruin, They Continued To Curse Him And To Speak Of Him As 'the Madman In The White House.' . . . [it's One More] Striking Example Of Inability To Learn From Experience.

All Traditional Logic Habitually Assumes That Precise Symbols Are Being Employed. It Is Therefore Not Applicable To This Terrestial Life But Only To An Imagined Celestial Existence... Logic Takes Us Nearer To Heaven Than Other Studies.

There Is Something Feeble And A Little Contemptible About A Man Who Cannot Face The Perils Of Life Without The Help Of Comfortable Myths.

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

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

Politics Is Concerned With Herds Rather Than With Individuals, And The Passions Which Are Important In Politics Are, Therefore, Those In Which The Various Members Of A Given Herd Can Feel Alike.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

For Over Two Thousand Years It Has Been The Custom Among Earnest Moralists To Decry Happiness As Something Degraded And Unworthy

Is There Any Knowledge In The World Which Is So Certain That No Reasonable Man Could Doubt It?

I Am Delighted To Know That Principia Mathematica Can Now Be Done By Machinery. . . I Am Quite Willing To Believe That Anything In Deductive Logic Can Be Done By Machinery.

Intelligence, It Might Be Said, Has Caused Our Troubles; But It Is Not Unintelligence That Will Cure Them. Only More And Wiser Intelligence Can Make A Happier World

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

The Main Thing Needed To Make Men Happy Is Intelligence.

It Must Not Be Supposed That The Subjective Elements Are Any Less 'real' Than The Objective Elements; They Are Only Less Important... Because They Do Not Point To Anything Beyond Ourselves.

At The Age Of Eleven, I Began Euclid, With My Brother As My Tutor. ... I Had Not Imagined That There Was Anything So Delicious In The World. After I Had Learned The Fifth Proposition, My Brother Told Me That It Was Generally Considered Difficult, But I Had Found No Difficulty Whatsoever. This Was The First Time It Had Dawned On Me That I Might Have Some Intelligence.

I Hate The World And Almost All The People In It. I Hate The Labour Congress And The Journalists Who Send Men To Be Slaughtered, And The Fathers Who Feel A Smug Pride When Their Sons Are Killed, And Even The Pacifists Who Keep Saying Human Nature Is Essentially Good, In Spite Of All The Daily Proofs To The Contrary. I Hate The Planet And The Human Race—i Am Ashamed To Belong To Such A Species.

If A Man Is Offered A Fact Which Goes Against His Instincts, He Will Scrutinize It Closely, And Unless The Evidence Is Overwhelming, He Will Refuse To Believe It. If, On The Other Hand, He Is Offered Something Which Affords A Reason For Acting In Accordance To His Instincts, He Will Accept It Even On The Slightest Evidence. The Origin Of Myths Is Explained In This Way.

Organized People Are Just Too Lazy To Look For Things

I Cannot Favour Laws Such As That Of Idaho, Which Allows Sterilization Of 'mental Defectives, Epileptics, Habitual Criminals, Moral Degenerates, And Sex Perverts.' The Last Two Categories Here Are Very Vague . . . The Law Of Idaho Would Have Justified The Sterilization Of Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, And St. Paul.

The Desire For Legitimate Offspring Is, In Fact, According To The Catholic Church, The Only Motive Which Can Justify Sexual Intercourse.

Ethical Metaphysics Is Fundamentally An Attempt, However Disguised, To Give Legislative Force To Our Own Wishes.

For Some Reason Which I Have Failed To Understand, Many People Like The System [scientific Totalitarianism] When It Is Russian But Disliked The Very Same System When It Was German. I Am Compelled To Think That This Is Due To The Power Of Labels; These People Like Whatever Is Labelled ‘left’ Without Examining Whether The Label Has Any Justification.

My First Advice (on How Not To Grow Old) Would Be To Choose You Ancestors Carefully.

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

If The Church Is Not Now As Bad As The Soviet Government, That Is Due To The Influence Of Those Who Attacked The Church

One Of The Chief Triumphs Of Modern Mathematics Consists In Having Discovered What Mathematics Really Is.

The Whole Realm Of Thought And Opinion Is Utterly Unsuited To Public Control; It Ought To Be As Free, And As Spontaneous As Is Possible. The State Is Justified In Insisting That Children Shall Be Educated, But It Is Not Justified In Forcing Their Education To Proceed On A Uniform Plan And To Be Directed To The Production Of A Dead Level Of Glib Uniformity.

The First Man Who Said "fire Burns" Was Employing Scientific Method, At Any Rate If He Had Allowed Himself To Be Burnt Several Times. This Man Had Already Passed Through The Two Stages Of Observation And Generalization. He Had Not, However, What Scientific Technique Demands - A Careful Choice Of Significant Facts On The One Hand, And, On The Other Hand, Various Means Of Arriving At Laws Otherwise Than My Mere Generalization.

A Smile Happens In A Flash, But Its Memory Can Last A Lifetime.

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

If Throughout Your Life You Abstain From Murder, Theft, Fornication, Perjury, Blasphemy, And Disrespect Toward Your Parents, Church, And Your King, You Are Conventionally Held To Deserve Moral Admiration Even If You Have Never Done A Single Kind, Generous Or Useful Action. This Very Inadequate Notion Of Virtue Is An Outcome Of Taboo Morality, And Has Done Untold Harm.

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.

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.

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.

The Demand For Certainty Is One Which Is Natural To Man, But Is Nevertheless An Intellectual Vice. So Long As Men Are Not Trained To Withhold Judgment In The Absence Of Evidence, They Will Be Led Astray By Cocksure Prophets, And It Is Likely That Their Leaders Will Be Either Ignorant Fanatics Or Dishonest Charlatans. To Endure Uncertainty Is Difficult, But So Are Most Of The Other Virtues.

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.

Philosophy Seems To Me On The Whole A Rather Hopeless Business.

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

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.

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.

Uncertainty In The Pressure Of Vivid Hopes And Fears Is Painful, But Must Be Endured If We Wish To Live Without The Support Of Comforting Fairy Tales.

Remember Your Humanity, And Forget The Rest.

Both In Thought And In Feeling, Even Though Time Be Real, To Realise The Unimportance Of Time Is The Gate Of Wisdom.

Drunkenness Is Temporary Suicide.

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

You Are A Wicked Motorcar, And I Shall Not Give You Any More Petrol Until You Go.

I Believe Four Ingredients Are Necessary For Happiness: Health, Warm Personal Relations, Sufficient Means To Keep You From Want, And Successful Work.

One Of The Most Powerful Of All Our Passions Is The Desire To Be Admired And Respected.

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.

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.

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

...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.

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.

In Any Closet, You Can Find It, If It Is Too Small, Or Out Of Style, Or There Is Just One Of It Where There Should Be Two

Man Needs, For His Happiness, Not Only The Enjoyment Of This Or That, But Hope And Enterprise And Change.

I Know A Parson Who Frightened His Congregation Terribly By Telling Them The Second Coming Was Very Imminent Indeed, But They Were Much Consoled When They Found He Was Planting Trees In His Garden.

The Very Best Proof That Something Can Be Done Is That Someone Has Already Done It.

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

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

What Will Be The Good Of The Conquest Of Leisure And Health, If No One Remembers How To Use Them?

People Who Are Vigorous And Brutal Often Find War Enjoyable.

The Evolution Of Our Spirit Is Blazed On The Dark Background Of Eternity By Our Individual Wakes. Every Person Can, If He/she Wishes, Leave A More Or Less Brilliant Wake Behind Them.

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

What Else Is There To Make Life Tolerable? We Stand On The Shore Of An Ocean, Crying To The Night And To Emptiness. Sometimes A Voice Of One Drowning, And In A Moment The Silence Returns. The World Seems To Me Quite Dreadful, The Unhappiness Of Many People Is Very Great, And I Often Wonder How They All Endure It. It Is Usually The Central Thing Around Which Their Lives Are Built, And I Suppose If They Did Not Live Most Of Their Lives In The Things Of The Moment, They Would Not Be Able To Go On.

Patriotism Is The Willingness To Kill And Be Killed For Trivial Reasons.

If The Ordinary Wage-earner Worked Four Hours A Day, There Would Be Enough For Everybody, And No Unemployment — Assuming A Certain Very Moderate Amount Of Sensible Organization. This Idea Shocks The Well-to-do, Because They Are Convinced That The Poor Would Not Know How To Use So Much Leisure.

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.

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

The Eugenic Society . . . Is Perpetually Bewailing The Fact That Wage-earners Breed Faster Than Middle-class People.

Science Seems To Be At War With Itself.... Naive Realism Leads To Physics, And Physics, If True, Shows Naive Realism To Be False. Therefore Naive Realism, If True, Is False; Therefore It Is False.

Patience And Boredom Are Closely Related. Boredom, A Certain Kind Of Boredom, Is Really Impatience. You Don't Like The Way Things Are, They Aren't Interesting Enough For You, So You Deccide- And Boredom Is A Decision-that You Are Bored.

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.

Real Life Is, To Most Men, A Long Second Best, A Perpetual Compromise Between The Ideal And The Possible.

The Fundamental Concept In Social Science Is Power, In The Same Sense In Which Energy Is The Fundamental Concept In Physics.

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.

Mathematics Rightly Viewed Possesses Not Only Truth But Supreme Beauty.

Western Philosophy

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

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.

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

A Man Is Rational In Proportion As His Intelligence Informs And Controls His Desires.

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.

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.'

If There Were In The World Today Any Large Number Of People Who Desired Their Own Happiness More Than They Desired The Unhappiness Of Others, We Could Have A Paradise In A Few Years.

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

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

Many Orthodox People Speak As Though It Were The Business Of Sceptics To Disprove Received Dogmas Rather Than Of Dogmatists To Prove Them. This Is, Of Course, A Mistake.

Right Discipline Consists, Not In External Compulsion, But In The Habits Of Mind Which Lead Spontaneously To Desirable Rather Than Undesirable Activities.

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

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

I Had Supposed Until That Time That It Was Quite Common For Parents To Love Their Children, But The War Persuaded Me That It Is A Rare Exception. I Had Supposed That Most People Liked Money Better Than Almost Anything Else, But I Discovered That They Liked Destruction Even Better. I Had Supposed That Intellectuals Frequently Loved Truth, But I Found Here Again That Not Ten Per Cent Of Them Prefer Truth To Popularity.

The Fact That A Belief Has A Good Moral Effect Upon A Man Is No Evidence Whatsoever In Favor Of Its Truth.

Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy Of Logical Atomism We've Associated That Word Philosophy With Academic Study That In Its Own Way Has Gotten So Far Beyond The Layman That If You Read Contemporary Philosophy You've No Clue, Because It's Almost Become Math. And It's Odd That If You Don't Do That And You Call Yourself A Philosopher That You Always Get 'homespun' Attached To It.

But Courage In Fighting Is By No Means The Only Form, Nor Perhaps Even The Most Important. There Is Courage In Facing Poverty, Courage In Facing Derision, Courage In Facing The Hostility Of One's Own Herd. In These, The Bravest Soldiers Are Often Lamentably Deficient. And Above All There Is The Courage To Think Calmly And Rationally In The Face Of Danger, And To Control The Impulse Of Panic Fear Or Panic Rage.

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.

It Is Preoccupation With Possessions, More Than Anything Else, That Prevents Us From Living Freely And Nobly.

[man] ... His Origin, His Growth, His Hopes And Fears, His Loves And His Beliefs Are But The Outcome Of Accidental Collocations Of Atoms; That No Fire, No Heroism, No Intensity Of Thought And Feeling Can Preserve An Individual Life Beyond The Grave; That All The Labour Of The Ages, All The Devotion, All The Inspiration, All The Noonday Brightness Of Human Genius Are Destined To Extinction In The Vast Death Of The Solar System, And That The Whole Temple Of Man's Achievement Must Inevitably Be Buried Beneath The Debris Of A Universe In Ruins.

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

Good Nature Is, Of All Moral Qualities, The One That The World Needs Most, And Good Nature Is The Result Of Ease And Security, Not Of A Life Of Arduous Struggle. Modern Methods Of Production Have Given Us The Possibility Of Ease And Security For All; We Have Chosen, Instead, To Have Overwork For Some And Starvation For The Others. Hitherto We Have Continued To Be As Energetic As We Were Before There Were Machines; In This We Have Been Foolish, But There Is No Reason To Go On Being Foolish For Ever.

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.

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.

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.

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.

European Travellers Find The Japanese A Smiling Race.

I Have Found, For Example, That If I Have To Write Upon Sum Rather Difficult Topic, The Best Plan Is To Think About It With Very Great Intensity-the Greatest Intensity Of Which I Am Capable-for A Few Hours Or Days, And At The End Of That Time Give Orders, So To Speak (to My Subconscious Mind) That The Work Is To Proceed Underground. After Some Months I Return Consciously To The Topic And Find That The Work Has Been Done.

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.

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.

We May Often Do As We Please - But We Cannot Please As We Please.

Mathematics, Rightly Viewed, Possesses Not Only Truth, But Supreme Beauty A Beauty Cold And Austere, Like That Of Sculpture, Without Appeal To Any Part Of Our Weaker Nature, Without The Georgeous Trappings Of Painting Or Music, Yet Sublimely Pure, And Capable Of A Stern Perfection Such As Only The Greatest Art Can Show. The True Spirit Of Delight, The Exaltation, The Sense Of Being More Than Man, Which Is The Touchstone Of The Highest Excellence, Is To Be Found In Mathematics As Surely As In Poetry.

I Do Not Myself Feel That Any Person Who Is Really Profoundly Humane Can Believe In Everlasting Punishment.

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

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

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

I Have Sought Love, First, Because It Brings Ecstasy – Ecstasy So Great That I Would Often Have Sacrificed All The Rest Of Life For A Few Hours Of That Joy. ... I Have Sought It, Finally, Because In The Union Of Love I Have Seen, In A Mystic Miniature, The Prefiguring Vision Of The Heaven That Saints And Poets Have Imagined.

The Psychology Of Adultery Has Been Falsified By Conventional Morals, Which Assume, In Monogamous Countries, That Attraction To One Person Cannot Coexist With Affection For Another. Everybody Knows That This Is Untrue.

Since Adam And Eve Ate The Apple, Man Has Never Refrained From Any Folly Of Which He Was Capable.

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.

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.

Descartes, The Father Of Modern Philosophy ... Would Never-so He Assures Us-have Been Led To Construct His Philosophy If He Had Had Only One Teacher, For Then He Would Have Believed What He Had Been Told; But, Finding That His Professors Disagreed With Each Other, He Was Forced To Conclude That No Existing Doctrine Was Certain.

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

A Man's Acts Are Partly Determined By Spontaneous Impulse, Partly By The Conscious And Unconscious Effects Of The Various Groups To Which He Belongs.

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

Man Can Be Scientifically Manipulated.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Philosophy Bakes No Bread

Man Is A Rational Animal—so At Least I Have Been Told. … Aristotle, So Far As I Know, Was The First Man To Proclaim Explicitly That Man Is A Rational Animal. His Reason For This View Was … That Some People Can Do Sums. … It Is In Virtue Of The Intellect That Man Is A Rational Animal. The Intellect Is Shown In Various Ways, But Most Emphatically By Mastery Of Arithmetic. The Greek System Of Numerals Was Very Bad, So That The Multiplication Table Was Quite Difficult, And Complicated Calculations Could Only Be Made By Very Clever People.

The Problem With The Wise Is They Are So Filled With Doubts While The Dull Are So Certain.

Science, By Itself Cannot, Supply Us With An Ethic.

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

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