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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.

-Bertrand Russell

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The Institution Of Representative

Bertrand Russell

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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.

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I Think People Who Are Unhappy Are Always Proud Of Being So, And Therefore Do Not Like To Be Told That There Is Nothing Grand About Their Unhappiness. A Man Who Is Melancholy Because Lack Of Exercise Has Upset His Liver Always Believes That It Is The Loss Of God, Or The Menace Of Bolshevism, Or Some Such Dignified Cause That Makes Him Sad. When You Tell People That Happiness Is A Simple Matter, They Get Annoyed With You.

I Believe In Using Words, Not Fists. I Believe In My Outrage Knowing People Are Living In Boxes On The Street. I Believe In Honesty. I Believe In A Good Time. I Believe In Good Food. I Believe In Sex.

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

I Am Myself A Dissenter From All Known Religions, And I Hope That Every Kind Of Religious Belief Will Die Out.

To Modern Educated People, It Seems Obvious That Matters Of Fact Are To Be Ascertained By Observation, Not By Consulting Ancient Authorities. But This Is An Entirely Modern Conception, Which Hardly Existed Before The Seventeenth Century.

I Remain Convinced That Obstinate Addiction To Ordinary Language In Our Private Thoughts Is One Of The Main Obstacles To Progress In Philosophy.

[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.

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

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

If We Spent Half An Hour Every Day In Silent Immobility, I Am Convinced That We Should Conduct All Our Affairs, Personal, National, And International, Far More Sanely Than We Do At Present.

To Be Able To Fill Leisure Intelligently Is The Last Product Of Civilization, And At Present Very Few People Have Reached This Level.

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

Aristotle Could Have Avoided The Mistake Of Thinking That Women Have Fewer Teeth Than Men, By The Simple Device Of Asking Mrs. Aristotle To Keep Her Mouth Open While He Counted.

The Power Of Thought, The Vast Regions It Can Master.

Power Of Thought

We All Have A Tendency To Think That The World Must Conform To Our Prejudices. The Opposite View Involves Some Effort Of Thought, And Most People Would Die Sooner Than Think In Fact They Do So.

Those Who Advocate Common Usage In Philosophy Sometimes Speak In A Manner That Suggests The Mystique Of The 'common Man.'

The Man Who Suffers From A Sense Of Sin Is Suffering From A Particular Kind Of Self-love. In All This Vast Universe The Thing That Appears To Him Of Most Importance Is That He Himself Should Be Virtuous. It Is A Grave Defect In Certain Forms Of Traditional Religion That They Have Encouraged This Particular Kind Of Self-absorption.

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

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

The Military Superiority Of Europe To Asia Is Not An Eternal Law Of Nature, As We Are Tempted To Think, And Our Superiority In Civilization Is A Mere Delusion.

When You Want To Teach Children To Think, You Begin By Treating Them Seriously When They Are Little, Giving Them Responsibilities, Talking To Them Candidly, Providing Privacy And Solitude For Them, And Making Them Readers And Thinkers Of Significant Thoughts From The Beginning. That’s If You Want To Teach Them To Think.

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.

Love Should Be A Tree Whose Roots Are Deep In The Earth, But Whose Branches Extend Into Heaven.

All Religions Are Both Harmful And Untrue.

I Would Never Die For My Beliefs Because I Might Be Wrong.

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.

Obviousness Is Always The Enemy Of Correctness.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

We Have In Fact, Two Kinds Of Morality, Side By Side: One Which We Preach, But Do Not Practice, And Another Which We Practice, But Seldom Preach.

Ethics And Morals

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

With Subjectivity In Philosophy, Anarchism In Politics Goes Hand In Hand. Already During Luther's Lifetime, Unwelcome And Unacknowledged Disciples Had Developed The Doctrine Of Anabaptism, Which For A Time Dominated The City Of Munster. The Anabaptists Repudiated All Law Since They Held That Good Men Will Be Guided At Every Moment By The Holy Spirit, Who Can Not Be Bound By Formulas. From This Premise They Arrive At Communism And Sexual Promiscuity; They Were Therefore Exterminated After A Heroic Resistance.

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

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

The Sentiments Of An Adult Are Compounded Of A Kernel Of Instinct Surrounded By A Vast Husk Of Education.

Democracy Has At Least One Merit, Namely That A Member Of Parliament Cannot Be Stupider Than His Constituents, For The More Stupid He Is, The More Stupid They Were To Elect Him.

Democracies Have

The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

Philosophy Is That Part Of Science Which At Present People Chose To Have Opinions About, But Which They Have No Knowledge About. Therefore Every Advance In Knowledge Robs Philosophy Of Some Problems Which Formerly It Had ...and Will Belong To Science.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Unrestricted Nationalism Is, In The Long Run, Incompatible With World Peace.

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

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.

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

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.

Freedom In General May Be Defined As The Absence Of Obstacles To The Realization Of Desires.

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

Whenever One Finds Oneself Inclined To Bitterness, It Is A Sign Of Emotional Failure.

A Stupid Man's Report Of What A Clever Man Says Can Never Be Accurate, Because He Unconsciously Translates What He Hears Into Something He Can Understand.

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.

Gradually, ... The Aspect Of Science As Knowledge Is Being Thrust Into The Background By The Aspect Of Science As The Power Of Manipulating Nature. It Is Because Science Gives Us The Power Of Manipulating Nature That It Has More Social Importance Than Art. Science As The Pursuit Of Truth Is The Equal, But Not The Superior, Of Art. Science As A Technique, Though It May Have Little Intrinsic Value, Has A Practical Importance To Which Art Cannot Aspire.

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

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.

Dr. Arnold . . . The Admired Reformer Of Public Schools, Came Across Some Cranks Who Thought It A Mistake To Flog Boys. Anyone Reading His Outburst Of Furious Indignation Against This Opinion Will Be Forced To The Conclusion That He Enjoyed Inflicting Floggings.

Are You Never Afraid Of God's Judgement In Denying Him? Most Certainly Not. I Also Deny Zeus And Jupiter And Odin And Brahma, But This Causes Me No Qualms. I Observe That A Very Large Portion Of The Human Race Does Not Believe In God And Suffers No Visible Punishment In Consequence. And If There Were A God, I Think It Very Unlikely That He Would Have Such An Uneasy Vanity As To Be Offended By Those Who Doubt His Existence.

3 Is Prime, 5 Is Prime, 7 Is Prime, 9 Is A Paradox; As Is A Paradox Why The Number 1 Is Not Prime If It Has No Other Divisors Besides Himself.

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

A Man Of Seville Is Shaved By The Barber Of Seville If And Only If The Man Does Not Shave Himself. Does The Barber Shave Himself?

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

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 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.

The Essence Of The Liberal Outlook Lies Not In What Opinions Are Held, But In How They Are Held; Instead Of Being Held Dogmatically, They Are Held Tentatively, And With A Consciousness That New Evidence May At Any Moment Lead To Their Abandonment.

Dogmatism And Skepticism Are Both, In A Sense, Absolute Philosophies; One Is Certain Of Knowing, The Other Of Not Knowing. What Philosophy Should Dissipate Is Certainty, Whether Of Knowledge Or Ignorance.

It Is Amusing To Hear The Modern Christian Telling You How Mild And Rationalistic Christianity Really Is And Ignoring The Fact That All Its Mildness And Rationalism Is Due To The Teaching Of Men Who In Their Own Day Were Persecuted By All Orthodox Christians.

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.

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

The Discipline In Your Life Should Be One Determined By Your Own Desires And Your Own Needs, Not Put Upon You By Society Or Authority.

All Forms Of Fear Produce Fatigue.

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

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

Procrastination

Men Who Allow Their Love Of Power To Give Them A Distorted View Of The World Are To Be Found In Every Asylum: One Man Will Think He Is The Governor Of The Bank Of England, Another Will Think He Is The King, And Yet Another Will Think He Is God. Highly Similar Delusions, If Expressed By Educated Men In Obscure Language, Lead To Professorships Of Philosophy; And If Expressed By Emotional Men In Eloquent Language, Lead To Dictatorships.

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.

The Scientific Attitude Of Mind Involves A Sweeping Away Of All Other Desires In The Interest Of The Desire To Know.

If The West Can Claim Superiority In Anything, It Is . . . In Science And Scientific Technique.

The More Intense Has Been The Religion Of Any Period And The More Profound Has Been The Dogmatic Belief, The Greater Has Been The Cruelty And The Worse Has Been The State Of Affairs.

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

Science, By Itself, Cannot Supply Us With An Ethic. It Can Show Us How To Achieve A Given End, And It May Show Us That Some Ends Cannot Be Achieved.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

There Are Certain Things That Our Age Needs. It Needs, Above All, Courageous Hope And The Impulse To Creativeness.

Unhappy Business Men, I Am Convinced, Would Increase Their Happiness More By Walking Six Miles Every Day Than By Any Conceivable Change Of Philosophy.

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.

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.

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

The Christian View That All Intercourse Outside Marriage Is Immoral Was, As We See In The Above Passages From St. Paul, Based Upon The View That All Sexual Intercourse, Even Within Marriage, Is Regrettable. A View Of This Sort, Which Goes Against Biological Facts, Can Only Be Regarded By Sane People As A Morbid Aberration. The Fact That It Is Embedded In Christian Ethics Has Made Christianity Throughout Its Whole History A Force Tending Towards Mental Disorders And Unwholesome Views Of Life.

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

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.'

Do Not Feel Certain Of Anything.

The Axiomatic Method Has Many Advantages Over Honest Work.

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

Not To Be Absolutely Certain Is, I Think, One Of The Essential Things In Rationality.

Doubt And Certainty

Certain Characteristics Of The Subject Are Clear. To Begin With, We Do Not In This Subject Deal With Particular Things Or Particular Properties: We Deal Formally With What Can Be Said About Any Thing Or Any Property. We Are Prepared To Say That One And One Are Two, But Not That Socrates And Plato Are Two.

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do. [...] The Most Savage Controversies Are Those About Matters As To Which There Is No Good Evidence Either Way. Persecution Is Used In Theology, Not In Arithmetic, Because In Arithmetic There Is Knowledge, But In Theology There Is Only Opinion. So Whenever You Find Yourself Getting Angry About A Difference Of Opinion, Be On Your Guard; You Will Probably Find, On Examination, That Your Belief Is Going Beyond What The Evidence Warrants.

Finding Yourself

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

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.

It Is Clear That Thought Is Not Free If The Profession Of Certain Opinions Makes It Impossible To Earn A Living.

Law In Origin Was Merely A Codification Of The Power Of Dominant Groups, And Did Not Aim At Anything That To A Modern Man Would Appear To Be Justice

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

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.

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

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.

Every Sane And Sensible And Quiet Thing We Do Is Absolutely Ignored By The Press.

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.

You Find As You Look Around The World That Every Single Bit Of Progress In Humane Feeling, Every Improvement In The Criminal Law, Every Step Toward The Diminution Of War, Every Step Toward Better Treatment Of The Colored Races, Or Every Mitigation Of Slavery, Every Moral Progress That There Has Been In The World, Has Been Consistently Opposed By The Organized Churches Of The World. I Say Quite Deliberately That The Christian Religion, As Organized In Its Churches, Has Been And Still Is The Principle Enemy Of Moral Progress In The World.

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.

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

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.

The Great Majority Of Men And Women, In Ordinary Times, Pass Through Life Without Ever Contemplating Or Criticising, As A Whole, Either Their Own Conditions Or Those Of The World At Large.

If The Youth Is Content To Abandon His Previous Associates And To Throw In His Lot Whole-heartedly With The Rulers, He May, After Suitable Tests, Be Promoted, But If He Shows Any Regrettable Solidarity With His Previous Associates, The Rulers Will Reluctantly Conclude That There Is Nothing To Be Done With Him Except To Send Him To The Lethal Chamber Before His Ill-disciplined Intelligence Has Had Time To Spread Revolt. This Will Be A Painful Duty To The Rulers, But I Think They Will Not Shrink From Performing It.

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

Most Political Leaders Acquire Their Position By Causing Large Numbers Of People To Believe That These Leaders Are Actuated By Altruistic Desires

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

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.

Christ . . . Said That A Man Who Had Looked After A Woman Lustfully Had Sinned As Much As The Man Who Had Seduced Her. How Absurd!

Almost All Education Has A Political Motive.

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

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.

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

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.

The Human Race May Well Become Extinct Before The End Of The Century.

I Did Not Know I Loved You Until I Heard Myself Telling So, For One Instance I Thought, "good God, What Have I Said?" And Then I Knew It Was True.

Aristotle Is The Last Greek Philosopher Who Faces The World Cheerfully; After Him, All Have, In One Form Or Another, A Philosophy Of Retreat.

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

If Everything Has A Cause, Then God Must Have A Cause. If There Can Be Anything Without A Cause, It May Just Be The World As God.

I Conclude That, While It Is True That Science Cannot Decide Questions Of Value, That Is Because They Cannot Be Intellectually Decided At All, And Lie Outside The Realm Of Truth And Falsehood. Whatever Knowledge Is Attainable, Must Be Attained By Scientific Methods; And What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot Know.

In The First Place A Philosophical Proposition Must Be General. It Must Not Deal Specially With Things On The Surface Of The Earth, Or Within The Solar System, Or With Any Other Portion Of Space And Time. . . . This Brings Us To A Second Characteristic Of Philosophical Propositions, Namely That They Must Be A Priori. A Philosophical Proposition Must Be Such As Can Neither Be Proved Nor Disproved By Empirical Evidence. . . . Philosophy, If What Has Been Said Is Correct, Becomes Indistinguishable From Logic As That Word Has Now Come To Be Used.

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

Patriots Always Talk Of Dying For Their Country And Never Of Killing For Their Country.

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.

Hitler Is An Outcome Of Rousseau.

I Do Not Think Any Reasonable Person Can Doubt That In India, China And Japan, If The Knowledge Of Birth Control Existed, The Birthrate Would Fall Very Rapidly

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.

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 Of Many Things Of Very Great Importance. Theology, On The Other Hand Induces A Dogmatic Belief That We Have Knowledge Where In Fact We Have Ignorance And By Doing So Generates A Kind Of Impertinent Insolence Towards The Universe. Uncertainty In The Presence Of Vivid Hopes And Fears Is Painful, But Must Be Endured If We Wish To Live Without The Support Of Comforting Fairy Tales.

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

The Fact That An Opinion Has Been Widely Held Is No Evidence Whatever That It Is Not Utterly Absurd.

In A Just World, There Would Be No Possibility Of 'charity'.

Bad Philosophers May Have A Certain Influence; Good Philosophers, Never.

Mystery Is Delightful, But Unscientific, Since It Depends Upon Ignorance.

Literature Is Inexhaustible, With Every Book A Homage To Infinity

[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.

Belief In A Divine Mission Is One Of The Many Forms Of Certainty That Have Afflicted The Human Race.

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.

Memory Demands An Image.

The First Dogma Which I Came To Disbelieve Was That Of Free Will. It Seemed To Me That All Notions Of Matter Were Determined By The Laws Of Dynamics And Could Not Therefore Be Influenced By Human Wills.

Unless You Assume A God, The Question Of Life's Purpose Is Meaningless.

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

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

My Own View On Religion Is . . . It Helped In Early Days To Fix The Calendar, And . . . To Chronicle Eclipses . . . These Two Services I Am Prepared To Acknowledge.

Machines Deprive Us Of Two Things Which Are Certainly Important Ingredients Of Human Happiness, Namely, Spontaneity And Variety.

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

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

When It Was First Proposed To Establish Laboratories At Cambridge, Todhunter, The Mathematician, Objected That It Was Unnecessary For Students To See Experiments Performed, Since The Results Could Be Vouched For By Their Teachers, All Of Them Of The Highest Character, And Many Of Them Clergymen Of The Church Of England.

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

Well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.

Adventurous Men Enjoy Shipwrecks, Mutinies, Earthquakes, Conflagrations, And All Kinds Of Unpleasant Experiences. They Say To Themselves, For Example, 'so This Is What An Earthquake Is Like,' And It Gives Them Pleasure To Have Their Knowledge Of The World Increased By This New Item.

Orthodoxy Is The Grave Of Intelligence, No Matter What Orthodoxy It May Be.

John Locke Invented Common Sense, And Only Englishmen Have Had It Ever Since!

Religion Is Based ... Mainly Upon Fear ... Fear Of The Mysterious, Fear Of Defeat, Fear Of Death. Fear Is The Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Have Gone Hand In Hand. 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.

It Is Obviously Possible That What We Call Waking Life May Only Be An Unusual And Persistent Nightmare.

Neither The Church Nor Modern Public Opinion Condemns Petting, Provided It Stops Short At A Certain Point.

Ordinary Language Is Totally Unsuited For Expressing What Physics Really Asserts, Since The Words Of Everyday Life Are Not Sufficiently Abstract. Only Mathematics And Mathematical Logic Can Say As Little As The Physicist Means To Say.

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.

You May Reasonably Expect A Man To Walk A Tightrope Safely For Ten Minutes; It Would Be Unreasonable To Do So Without Accident For Two Hundred Years.

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.

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

Science And Religion

America Remained A Land Of Promise For Lovers Of Freedom. Even Byron, At A Moment When He Was Disgusted With Napoleon For Not Committing Suicide, Wrote An Eloquent Stanza In Praise Of Washington.

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.

No People Anywhere In The World Would Accept Being Expelled En Masse From Their Own Country; How Can Anyone Require The People Of Palestine To Accept A Punishment Which Nobody Else Would Tolerate?

Dread Of Disaster Makes Everybody Act In The Very Way That Increases The Disaster. Psychologically The Situation Is Analogous To That Of People Trampled To Death When There Is A Panic In A Theatre Caused By A Cry Of `fire!'.

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

War Grows Out Of Ordinary Human Nature.

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.

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

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.

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

For My Part I Distrust All Generalizations About Women, Favorable And Unfavorable, Masculine And Feminine, Ancient And Modern; All Alike, I Should Say, Result From Paucity Of Experience.

Masculine And Feminine

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

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

I Was Told That The Chinese Said They Would Bury Me By The Western Lake And Build A Shrine To My Memory. I Have Some Slight Regret That This Did Not Happen, As I Might Have Become A God, Which Would Have Been Very Chic For An Atheist.

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.

Americans And Englishmen, When They Become Acquainted With The Balkans, Feel An Astonished Contempt When They Study The Mutual Enmities Of Bulgarians And Serbs, Of Hungarians And Rumanians. It Is Evident To Them That These Enmities Are Absurd And That The Belief Of Each Little Nation In Its Own Superiority Has No Objective Basis. But Most Of Them Are Quite Unable To See That The National Pride Of A Great Power Is Essentially As Unjustifiable As That Of A Little Balkan Country.

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

Asking Questions

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.

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.

It Is Possible That Mankind Is On The Threshold Of A Golden Age; But, If So, It Will Be Necessary First To Slay The Dragon That Guards The Door, And This Dragon Is Religion.

It Is Only In Marriage With The World That Our Ideals Can Bear Fruit; Divorced From It, They Remain Barren.

A Religious Creed Differs From A Scientific Theory In Claiming To Embody Eternal And Absolutely Certain Truth, Whereas Science Is Always Tentative, Expecting That Modification In Its Present Theories Will Sooner Or Later Be Found Necessary, And Aware That Its Method Is One Which Is Logically Incapable Of Arriving At A Complete And Final Demonstration.

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

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.

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