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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.

-Bertrand Russell

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The Fact That All

Bertrand Russell

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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.

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Mathematical Logic

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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.

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

If One Lived For Ever The Joys Of Life Would Inevitably In The End Lose Their Savour. As It Is, They Remain Perennially Fresh.

We Ought To Look The World Frankly In The Face.

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

It Will Be Said That The Joy Of Mental Adventure Must Be Rare, That There Are Few Who Can Appreciate It, And That Ordinary Education Can Take No Account Of So Aristocratic A Good. I Do Not Believe This. The Joy Of Mental Adventure Is Far Commoner In The Young Than In Grown Men And Women. ...it Is Rare In Later Life Because Everything Is Done To Kill It During Education.

Half The Useful Work In The World Consists Of Combating The Harmful Work.

All Religions Are Both Harmful And Untrue.

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.

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

Reason May Be A Small Force, But It Is Constant, And Works Always In One Direction, While The Forces Of Unreason Destroy One Another In Futile Strife.

All Definite Knowledge - So I Should Contend - Belongs To Science; All Dogma As To What Surpasses Definite Knowledge Belongs To Theology. But Between Theology And Science There Is A No Man's Land, Exposed To Attack By Both Sides; This No Man's Land Is Philosophy.

In Adolescence, I Hated Life And Was Continually On The Verge Of Suicide, From Which, However, I Was Restrained By The Desire To Know More Mathematics. Now, On The Contrary, I Enjoy Life; I Might Almost Say That With Every Year That Passes I Enjoy It More.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

God And Satan Alike Are Essentially Human Figures, The One A Projection Of Ourselves, The Other Of Our Enemies.

I Am Compelled To Fear That Science Will Be Used To Promote The Power Of Dominant Groups Rather Than To Make Men Happy.

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

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.

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.

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.

Every Great Idea Starts Out As A Blasphemy.

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.

One Must Care About A World One Will Not See.

The Road To Happiness And Prosperity Lies In An Organized Diminution Of Work.

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

I Once Saw A Photograph Of A Large Herd Of Wild Elephants In Central Africa Seeing An Airplane For The First Time, And All In A State Of Wild Collective Terror... As, However, There Were No Journalists Among Them, The Terror Died Down When The Airplane Was Out Of Sight.

My Own View On Religion Is That Of Lucretius. I Regard It As A Disease Born Of Fear And As A Source Of Untold Misery To The Human Race.

The Desire To Understand The World And The Desire To Reform It Are The Two Great Engines Of Progress, Without Which Human Society Would Stand Still Or Retrogress.

Only Mathematics And Mathematical Logic Can Say As Little As The Physicist Means To Say.

Mathematical Logic

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.

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

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

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.

A Fanatical Belief In Democracy Makes Democratic Institutions Impossible.

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

Suppose Atomic Bombs Had Reduced The Population Of The World To One Brother And Sister; Should They Let The Human Race Die Out?

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

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

Hegel's Philosophy Is So Odd That One Would Not Have Expected Him To Be Able To Get Sane Men To Accept It, But He Did. He Set It Out With So Much Obscurity That People Thought It Must Be Profound. It Can Quite Easily Be Expounded Lucidly In Words Of One Syllable, But Then Its Absurdity Becomes Obvious.

Belief Systems Provide A Programme Which Relieves The Necessity Of Thought.

There Are Two Motives For Reading A Book; One, That You Enjoy It; The Other, That You Can Boast About It.

Broadly Speaking, We Are In The Middle Of A Race Between Human Skill As A Means And Human Folly As An End.

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

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.

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.

I Did Not, However, Commit Suicide, Because I Wished To Know More Of Mathematics.

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.

The Opposition Of Instinct And Reason Is Mainly Illusory. Instinct, Intuition, Or Insight Is What First Leads To The Beliefs Which Subsequent Reason Confirms Or Confutes; But The Confirmation, Where It Is Possible, Consists, In The Last Analysis, Of Agreement With Other Beliefs No Less Instinctive. Reason Is A Harmonizing, Controlling Force Rather Than A Creative One. Even In The Most Purely Logical Realms, It Is Insight That First Arrives At What Is New.

Collective Wisdom, Alas, Is No Adequate Substitute For The Intelligence Of Individuals. Individuals Who Opposed Received Opinions Have Been The Source Of All Progress, Both Moral And Intellectual. They Have Been Unpopular, As Was Natural.

People Who Are Vigorous And Brutal Often Find War Enjoyable.

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.

Prison Is A Severe And Terrible Punishment; But For Me, Thanks To Arthur Balfour, This Was Not So. I Was Much Cheered On My Arrival By The Warder At The Gate, Who Had To Take Particulars About Me. He Asked My Religion, And I Replied 'agnostic.' He Asked How To Spell It, And Remarked With A Sigh: 'well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.' This Remark Kept Me Cheerful For About A Week.

Animal Rights, Taken To Their Logical Conclusion, Mean Votes For Oysters.

Worry Is A Form Of Fear, And All Forms Of Fear Produce Fatigue. A Man Who Has Learned Not To Feel Fear Will Find The Fatigue Of Daily Life Enormously Diminished.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Men Have Physical Needs, And They Have Emotions. While Physical Needs Are Unsatisfied, They Take First Place; But When They Are Satisfied, Emotions Unconnected With Them Become Important In Deciding Whether A Man Is To Be Happy Or Unhappy.

It Is For This Reason That Rationality Is Of Supreme Importance To The Well-being Of The Human Species...even More, In Those Less Fortunate Times In Which It Is Despised And Rejected As The Vain Dream Of Men Who Lack The Virility To Kill Where They Cannot Agree.

Every Advance In Civilization Has Been Denounced As Unnatural While It Was Recent

That Which Exists Through Itself Is Called The Eternal. The Eternal Has Neither Name Nor Shape. It Is The One Essence, The One Primal Spirit. Essence And Life Cannot Be Seen. They Are Contained In The Light Of Heaven. The Light Of Heaven Cannot Be Seen. It Is Contained In The Two Eyes.

The True Function Of Logic ... As Applied To Matters Of Experience ... Is Analytic Rather Than Constructive; Taken A Priori, It Shows The Possibility Of Hitherto Unsuspected Alternatives More Often Than The Impossibility Of Alternatives Which Seemed Prima Facie Possible. Thus, While It Liberates Imagination As To What The World May Be, It Refuses To Legislate As To What The World Is

Bacon Not Only Despised The Syllogism, But Undervalued Mathematics, Presumably As Insufficiently Experimental. He Was Virulently Hostile To Aristotle , But He Thought Very Highly Of Democritus , Although He Did Not Deny That The Course Of Nature Exemplifies A Divine Purpose, He Objected To Any Admixture Of Teleological Explanation In The Actual Investigation Of Phenomena; Everything, He Held, Should Be Explained As Following Necessarily From Efficient Causes .

The Argument Against The Persecution Of Opinion Does Not Depend Upon What The Excuse For Persecution May Be. The Argument Is That We None Of Us Know All Truth, That The Discovery Of New Truth Is Promoted By Free Discussion And Rendered Very Difficult By Suppression.

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

There Is Something Feeble, And A Little Contemptible, About A Man Who Cannot Face The Perils Of Life Without The Help Of Comfortable Myths. Almost Inevitably Some Part Of Him Is Aware That They Are Myths And That He Believes Them Only Because They Are Comforting. But He Dare Not Face This Thought, And He Therefore Cannot Carry His Own Reflection To Any Logical Conclusion.

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

The Dictum That Human Nature Cannot Be Changed Is One Of Those Tiresome Platitudes That Conceal From The Ignorant The Depths Of Their Own Ignorance.

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.

Respectability, Regularity, And Routine - The Whole Cast-iron Discipline Of A Modern Industrial Society - Have Atrophied The Artistic Impulse, And Imprisoned Love So That It Can No Longer Be Generous And Free And Creative, But Must Be Either Stuffy Or Furtive.

Love Is A Little Haven Of Refuge From The World.

There Is Exactly The Same Degree Of Possibility And Likelihood Of The Existence Of The Christian God As There Is Of The Existence Of The Homeric God. I Cannot Prove That Either The Christian God Or The Homeric Gods Do Not Exist, But I Do Not Think That Their Existence Is An Alternative That Is Sufficiently Probable To Be Worth Serious Consideration.

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 Wise Man Thinks About His Troubles Only When There Is Some Purpose In Doing So; At Other Times He Thinks About Other Things, Or, If It Is Night, About Nothing At All.

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

Every Philosophical Problem, When It Is Subjected To The Necessary Analysis And Justification, Is Found Either To Be Not Really Philosophical At All, Or Else To Be, In The Sense In Which We Are Using The Word, Logical.

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.

There Are Still Many People In America Who Regard Depressions As Acts Of God. I Think Keynes Proved That The Responsibility For These Occurrences Does Not Rest With Providence.

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

I Think The Subject Which Will Be Of Most Importance Politically Is Mass Psychology... Its Importance Has Been Enormously Increased By The Growth Of Modern Methods Of Propaganda. Although This Science Will Be Diligently Studied, It Will Be Rigidly Confined To The Governing Class. The Populace Will Not Be Allowed To Know How Its Convictions Are Generated.

World Government

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

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

Never Let Yourself Be Diverted, Either By What You Wish To Believe, Or What You Think Could Have Beneficent Social Effects If It Were Believed; But Look Only And Solely At What Are The Facts.

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.

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.

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 Skill Of The Politician Consists In Guessing What People Can Be Brought To Think Advantageous To Themselves; The Skill Of The Expert Consists In Calculating What Really Is Advantageous, Provided People Can Be Brought To Think So.

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

This, However, Is A Passing Nightmare; In Time The Earth Will Become Again Incapable Of Supporting Life, And Peace Will Return.

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

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

Few People Can Be Happy Unless They Hate Some Other Person, Nation, Or Creed.

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

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

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

Almost All Education Has A Political Motive.

Dora And I Are Now Married, But Just As Happy As We Were Before.

It Is Not By Delusion, However Exalted, That Mankind Can Prosper, But Only By Unswerving Courage In The Pursuit Of Truth.

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.

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.

What Was Exciting In The Victorian Age, Would Leave A Man Of Franker Epoch Quite Unmoved. The More Prudes Restrict The Permissible Degree Of Sexual Appeal, The Less Is Required To Make Such An Appeal Effective.

Vanity Is A Motive Of Immense Potency.

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

Those Who Have Never Known The Deep Intimacy And The Intense Companionship Of Happy Mutual Love Have Missed The Best Thing That Life Has To Give.

The Legacy Of Greece To Western Philosophy Is Western Philosophy.

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

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

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

The 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.

Hitler Is An Outcome Of Rousseau.

There Are Infinite Possibilities Of Error, And More Cranks Take Up Fashionable Untruths Than Unfashionable Truths.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

It Appeared To Me That The Dignity Of Which Human Existence Is Capable Is Not Attainable By Devotion To The Mechanism Of Life , And That Unless Contemplation Of Eternal Things Is Preserved, Mankind Will Become No Better Than Well-fed Pigs.

Mankind Has Become So Much One Family That We Cannot Insure Our Own Prosperity Except By Insuring That Of Everyone Else.

One Of The Symptoms Of Approaching Nervous Breakdown Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important, And That To Take A Holiday Would Bring All Kinds Of Disaster. If I Were A Medical Man, I Should Prescribe A Holiday To Any Patient Who Considered His Or Her Work Important.

To Choose One Sock From Each Of Infinitely Many Pairs Of Socks Requires The Axiom Of Choice, But For Shoes The Axiom Is Not Needed.

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 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.

Life Seems To Me Essentially Passion, Conflict, Rage. It Is Only Intellect That Keeps Me Sane; Perhaps This Makes Me Overvalue Intellect Against Feeling.

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.

I Resolved From The Beginning Of My Quest That I Would Not Be Misled By Sentiment And Desire Into Beliefs For Which There Was No Good Evidence.

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

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.

It Is Undesirable To Believe A Proposition When There Is No Ground Whatever For Supposing It True

Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habit. Thought Is Great And Swift And Free.

The Most Valuable Things In Life Are Not Measured In Monetary Terms. The Really Important Things Are Not Houses And Lands, Stocks And Bonds, Automobiles And Real State, But Friendships, Trust, Confidence, Empathy, Mercy, Love And Faith.

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.

Every Increase In Knowledge Requires An Increase In Wisdom

There Is No Excuse For Deceiving Children. And When, As Must Happen In Conventional Families, They Find That Their Parents Have Lied, They Lose Confidence In Them And Feel Justified In Lying To Them.

I Hold All Knowledge That Is Concerned With Things That Actually Exist - All That Is Commonly Called Science - To Be Of Very Slight Value Compared To The Knowledge Which, Like Philosophy And Mathematics, Is Concerned With Ideal And Eternal Objects, And Is Freed From This Miserable World Which God Has Made.

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

I Found One Day In School A Boy Of Medium Size Ill-treating A Smaller Boy. I Expostulated, But He Replied: "the Bigs Hit Me, So I Hit The Babies; That's Fair." In These Words He Epitomized The History Of The Human Race.

I've Made An Odd Discovery. Every Time I Talk To A Savant I Feel Quite Sure That Happiness Is No Longer A Possibility. Yet When I Talk With My Gardener, I'm Convinced Of The Opposite.

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

When A Man Acts In Ways That Annoy Us We Wish To Think Him Wicked, And We Refuse To Face The Fact That His Annoying Behavior Is The Result Of Antecedent Causes Which, If You Follow Them Long Enough, Will Take You Beyond The Moment Of His Birth, And Therefore To Events For Which He Cannot Be Held Responsible By Any Stretch Of Imagination... When A Motorcar Fails To Start, We Do Not Attribute Its Annoying Behavior To Sin, We Do Not Say, You Are A Wicked Motorcar, And You Shall Not Have Any More Gasoline Until You Go.

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

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

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.

Perhaps The Nuclear Physicists Have Come So Near To The Ultimate Secrets That He Thinks It Time To Bring Their Activities To A Stop. And What Simpler Method Could He Devise Than To Let Them Carry Their Ingenuity To The Point Where They Exterminate The Human Race?

When We Perceive Any Object Of A Familiar Kind, Much Of What Appears Subjectively To Be Immediately Given Is Really Derived From Past Experience.

Love Is A Slippery Eel That Bites Like Hell

What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot Know.

It Is One Of The Defects Of Modern Higher Education That It Has Become Too Much A Training In The Acquisition Of Certain Kinds Of Skill, And Too Little An Enlargement Of The Mind And Heart By An Impartial Survey Of The World.

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.

The Main Things Which Seem To Me Important On Their Own Account, And Not Merely As Means To Other Things, Are Knowledge, Art, Instinctive Happiness, And Relations Of Friendship Or Affection.

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

The Trouble With The World Is That The Stupid Are Cocksure And The Intelligent Are Full Of Doubt.

History Is Valuable, To Begin With, Because It Is True; And This, Though Not The Whole Of Its Value, Is The Foundation And Condition Of All The Rest. That All Knowledge, As Such, Is In Some Degree Good, Would Appear To Be At Least Probable; And The Knowledge Of Every Historical Fact Possesses This Element Of Goodness, Even If It Posses No Other.

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

Aristotle And Plato Considered Greeks So Innately Superior To Barbarians That Slavery Is Justified So Long As The Master Is Greek And The Slave Barbarian.

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.

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.

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

I Am As Drunk As A Lord, But Then, I Am One, So What Does It Matter ?

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

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

Some `advanced Thinkers' Are Of The Opinion That Anyone Who Differs From The Conventional Opinion Must Be In The Right. This Is A Delusion; If It Were Not, Truth Would Be Easier To Come By Than It Is.

A Good Social System Is Not To Be Secured By Making People Unselfish, But, By Making Their Own Vital Impulses Fit In With Other Peoples. This Is Feasible. Those Who Have Produced Stoic Philosophies Have All Had Enough To Eat And Drink. I Feel I Shall Find The Truth On My Deathbed And Be Surrounded By People Too Stupid To Understand—fussing About Medicines Instead Of Searching For Wisdom. I Hate Being All Tidy Like A Book In A Library Where Nobody Reads – Prison Is Horribly Like That.

There May Be No Good Reasons For Very Many Opinions That Are Held With Passion.

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."

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

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

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.

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.

No One Ever Gossips About The Virtues Of Others

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

America... Where Law And Custom Alike Are Based Upon The Dreams Of Spinsters...

Aristotle, In Spite Of His Reputation, Is Full Of Absurdities. He Says That Children Should Be Conceived In The Winter, When The Wind Is In The North, And That If People Marry Too Young The Children Will Be Female. He Tells Us That The Blood Of Females Is Blacker Than That Of Males; That The Pig Is The Only Animal Liable To Measles; That An Elephant Suffering From Insomnia Should Have Its Shoulders Rubbed With Salt, Olive-oil, And Warm Water; That Women Have Fewer Teeth Than Men, And So On. Nevertheless, He Is Considered By The Great Majority Of Philosophers A Paragon Of Wisdom.

The World In Which We Live Can Be Understood As A Result Of Muddle And Accident; But If It Is The Outcome Of Deliberate Purpose, The Purpose Must Have Been That Of A Fiend. For My Part, I Find Accident A Less Painful And More Plausible Hypothesis.

In Science The Successors Stand Upon The Shoulders Of Their Predecessors; Where One Man Of Supreme Genius Has Invented A Method, A Thousand Lesser Men Can Apply It. ... In Art Nothing Worth Doing Can Be Done Without Genius; In Science Even A Very Moderate Capacity Can Contribute To A Supreme Achievement.

The Fact That A Belief Has A Good Moral Effect Upon A Man Is No Evidence Whatsoever In Favor Of Its Truth. I'm Not Contending In A Dogmatic Way That There Is Not A God. What I'm Contending Is That We Don't Know That There Is. I Don't Like The Word "absolute." I Don't Think There Is Anything Absolute Whatever. The Moral Law, For Example, Is Always Changing. At One Period In The Development Of The Human Race, Almost Everybody Thought Cannibalism Was A Duty.

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

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

Many A Marriage Hardly Differs From Prostitution, Except Being Harder To Escape From.

Punctuality Is A Quality The Need Of Which Is Bound Up With Social Co-operation.

All Who Are Not Lunatics Are Agreed About Certain Things : That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead, Better To Be Adequately Fed Than Starved, Better To Be Free Than A Slave

If We Were All Given By Magic The Power To Read Each Other’s Thoughts, I Suppose The First Effect Would Be Almost All Friendships Would Be Dissolved; The Second Effect, However, Might Be Excellent, For A World Without Any Friends Would Be Felt To Be Intolerable, And We Should Learn To Like Each Other Without Needing A Veil Of Illusion To Conceal From Ourselves That We Did Not Think Each Other Absolutely Perfect.

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

Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habit.

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Margaret Cavendish

Lord Chesterfield

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