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The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation ... It Is Common To Wish Well To Oneself, But In Our Technically Unified World, Wishing Well To Oneself Is Sure To Be Futile Unless It Is Combined With Wishing Well To Others.

-Bertrand Russell

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The Only Thing That

Bertrand Russell

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The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation ... It Is Common To Wish Well To Oneself, But In Our Technically Unified World, Wishing Well To Oneself Is Sure To Be Futile Unless It Is Combined With Wishing Well To Others.

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One Of The Symptoms Of An Approaching Nervous Breakdown Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important.

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.

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

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.

We Know Very Little, And Yet It Is Astonishing That We Know So Much, And Still More Astonishing That So Little Knowledge Can Give Us So Much Power.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Righteous Indignation

Literature Is Inexhaustible, With Every Book A Homage To Infinity

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

When The Intensity Of Emotional Conviction Subsides, A Man Who Is In The Habit Of Reasoning Will Search For Logical Grounds In Favour Of The Belief Which He Finds In Himself.

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

In Attempting To Understand The Elements Out Of Which Mental Phenomena Are Compounded, It Is Of The Greatest Importance To Remember That From The Protozoa To Man There Is Nowhere A Very Wide Gap Either In Structure Or In Behaviour. From This Fact It Is A Highly Probable Inference That There Is Also Nowhere A Very Wide Mental Gap.

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.

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

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

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

No Great Achievement Is Possible Without Persistent Work.

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

Moral Indignation Is One Of The Most Harmful Forces In The Modern World, The More So As It Can Always Be Diverted To Sinister Uses By Those Who Control Propaganda.

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

There Is Little Of The True Philosophic Spirit In Aquinas. He Does Not, Like The Platonic Socrates, Set Out To Follow Wherever The Argument May Lead.

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.

At First It Seems Obvious, But The More You Think About It The Stranger The Deductions From This Axiom Seem To Become; In The End You Cease To Understand What Is Meant By It.

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

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

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

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

The Taboo Against Nakedness Is An Obstacle To A Decent Attitude On The Subject Of Sex.

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

Love Cannot Exists As A Duty; To Tell A Child That It Ought To Love Its Parents And Its Brother And Sisters Is Utterly Useless, If Not Worse.

Science May Set Limits To Knowledge, But Should Not Set Limits To Imagination.

The Theoretical Understanding Of The World, Which Is The Aim Of Philosophy, Is Not A Matter Of Great Practical Importance To Animals, Or To Savages, Or Even To Most Civilised Men.

Prophets, Mystics, Poets, Scientific Discoverers Are Men Whose Lives Are Dominated By A Vision; They Are Essentially Solitary Men . . . Whose Thoughts And Emotions Are Not Subject To The Dominion Of The Herd.

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

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

Anything You're Good At Contributes To Happiness.

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

Men Fear Thought As They Fear Nothing Else On Earth - More Than Ruin, More Even Than Death. Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habits; Thought Is Anarchic And Lawless, Indifferent To Authority, Careless Of The Well-tried Wisdom Of The Ages. Thought Looks Into The Pit Of Hell And Is Not Afraid ... Thought Is Great And Swift And Free, The Light Of The World, And The Chief Glory Of Man.

We Are ... Led To A Somewhat Vague Distinction Between What We May Call "hard" Data And "soft" Data. This Distinction Is A Matter Of Degree, And Must Not Be Pressed; But If Not Taken Too Seriously It May Help To Make The Situation Clear. I Mean By "hard" Data Those Which Resist The Solvent Influence Of Critical Reflection, And By "soft" Data Those Which, Under The Operation Of This Process, Become To Our Minds More Or Less Doubtful.

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

The Secret Of Happiness Is This: Let Your Interests Be As Wide As Possible, And Let Your Reactions To The Things And Persons That Interest You Be As Far As Possible Friendly Rather Than Hostile.

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

It Would Now Be Technically Possible To Unify The World, Abolish War And Poverty Altogether, If Men Desired Their Own Happiness More Than The Misery Of Their Enemies.

We Must Be Skeptical Even Of Our Skepticism.

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.

People Are Said To Believe In God, Or To Disbelieve In Adam And Eve. But In Such Cases What Is Believed Or Disbelieved Is That There Is An Entity Answering A Certain Description. This, Which Can Be Believed Or Disbelieved Is Quite Different From The Actual Entity (if Any) Which Does Answer The Description. Thus The Matter Of Belief Is, In All Cases, Different In Kind From The Matter Of Sensation Or Presentation, And Error Is In No Way Analogous To Hallucination. A Hallucination Is A Fact, Not An Error; What Is Erroneous Is A Judgment Based Upon It.

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

The Mormons Had A Divine Revelation In Favour Of Polygamy, But Under Pressure From The United States Government They Discovered That The Revelation Was Not Binding.

Divine Revelation

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

Christ Said "thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself" And When Asked "who Is Thy Neighbour? Went On To The Parable Of The Good Samaritan. If You Wish To Understand This Parable As It Was Understood By His Hearers, You Should Substitute "germans And Japanese" For Samaritan. I Fear My Modern Day Christians Would Resent Such A Substitution, Because It Would Compel Them To Realize How Far They Have Departed From The Teachings Of The Founder Of Their Religion.

I Feel As If One Would Only Discover On One's Death Bed What One Ought To Have Lived For

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.

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

Those Who In Principle Oppose Birth Control Are Either Incapable Of Arithmetic Or Else In Favour Of War, Pestilence And Famine As Permanent Features Of Human Life.

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

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little.

What Hunger Is In Relation To Food, Zest Is In Relation To Life.

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

Ever Since Men Became Capable Of Free Speculation, Their Actions, In Innumerable Important Respects, Have Depended Upon Their Theories As To The World And Human Life, As To What Is Good And What Is Evil. This Is True In The Present Day As At Any Former Time. To Understand An Age Or A Nation, We Must Understand Its Philosophy, And To Understand Its Philosophy We Must Ourselves Be In Some Degree Philosophers. There Is Here A Reciprocal Causation: The Circumstances Of Men S Lives Do Much To Determine Their Philosophy, But, Conversely, Their Philosophy Does Much To Determine Their Circumstances.

Man Can Be Stimulated By Hope Or Driven By Fear, But The Hope And The Fear Must Be Vivid And Immediate If They Are To Be Effective Without Producing Weariness.

When A Man Tells You That He Knows The Exact Truth About Anything You Are Safe In Inferring That He Is An Inexact Man.

Always Remember That True Happiness Is Not In Getting What You Want, But Wanting What You Already Have. He Who Dies With The Most Toys Is Still Dead. What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

Getting What You Want

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.

There Is Darkness Without And When I Die There Will Be Darkness Within. There Is No Splendor, Nor Vastness Anywhere; Only Triviality For A Moment And Then Nothing.

Darkness Within

One Is Always A Little Afraid Of Love, But Above All, One Is Afraid Of Pain Or Causing Pain.

A Democrat Need Not Believe That The Majority Will Always Reach A Wise Decision. He Should However Believe In The Necessity Of Accepting The Decision Of The Majority, Be It Wise Or Unwise, Until Such A Time That The Majority Reaches Another Decision.

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.

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.

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

Falling In Love

New Relationship

Admiration Of The Proletariat, Like That Of Dams, Power Stations, And Aeroplanes, Is Part Of The Ideology Of The Machine Age.

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

Another Merit Of Home Is That It Preserves The Diversity Between Individuals. If We Were All Alike, It Might Be Convenient For The Bureaucrat And The Statistician, But It Would Be Very Dull, And Would Lead To A Very Unprogressive Society.

Even When The Experts All Agree, They May Well Be Mistaken.

It [is] Possible To Suppose That, If Russia Is Allowed To Have Peace, An Amazing Industrial Development May Take Place, Making Russia A Rival Of The United States.

Cruel Men Believe In A Cruel God And Use Their Belief To Excuse Their Cruelty. Only Kindly Men Believe In A Kindly God, And They Would Be Kindly In Any Case.

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.

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

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

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

Mysticism Is, In Essence, Little More Than A Certain Intensity And Depth Of Feeling In Regard To What Is Believed About The Universe.

I Believe That When I Die I Shall Rot, And Nothing Of My Ego Will Survive. I Am Not Young, And I Love Life. But I Should Scorn To Shiver With Terror At The Thought Of Annihilation. Happiness Is Nonetheless True Happiness Because It Must Come To An End, Nor Do Thought And Love Lose Their Value Because They Are Not Everlasting.

Life And Hope For The World Are To Be Found Only In The Deeds Of Love.

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

It Is Not Known Why The Lord Made The Human Body As He Did, Since One Might Suppose That Omnipotence Could Have Made It Such As Would Not Have Shocked The Nice People.

To A Modern Mind, It Is Difficult To Feel Enthusiastic About A Virtuous Life If Nothing Is Going To Be Achieved By It.

If We Were All Given By Magic The Power To Read Each Other's Thoughts, I Suppose The First Effect Would Be To Dissolve All Friendships.

Friendship Love

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.

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

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.

Facts Have To Be Discovered By Observation, Not By Reasoning

To The Primitive Mind, Everything Is Either Friendly Or Hostile; But Experience Has Shown That Friendliness And Hostility Are Not The Conceptions By Which The World Is To Be Understood.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

The Only Thing That Will Redeem Mankind Is Cooperation.

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.

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.

To Speak Seriously: The Standards Of "goodness" Which Are Generally Recognized By Public Opinion Are Not Those Which Are Calculated To Make The World A Happier Place. This Is Due To A Variety Of Causes, Of Which The Chief Is Tradition, And The Next Most Powerful Is The Unjust Power Of Dominant Classes.

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.

All Human Activity Is Prompted By Desire.

All The Time That He Can Spare From The Adornment Of His Person, He Devotes To The Neglect Of His Duties.

Understanding Human Nature Must Be The Basis Of Any Real Improvement In Human Life. Science Has Done Wonders In Mastering The Laws Of The Physical World, But Our Own Nature Is Much Less Understood, As Yet, Than The Nature Of Stars And Electrons. When Science Learns To Understand Human Nature, It Will Be Able To Bring A Happiness Into Our Lives Which Machines And The Physical Sciences Have Failed To Create.

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

Life Is Nothing But A Competition To Be The Criminal Rather Than The Victim.

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.

When I Was 4 Years Old ... I Dreamt That I'd Been Eaten By A Wolf, And To My Great Surprise I Was In The Wolf's Stomach And Not In Heaven.

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.

The Essence Of Education Is That It Is A Change Effected In The Organism To Satisfy The Operator.

Fundamental Happiness Depends More Than Anything Else Upon What May Be Called A Friendly Interest In Persons And Things.

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

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

Vanity Is A Motive Of Immense Potency.

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.

Love Is Something Far More Than Desire For Sexual Intercourse; It Is The Principal Means Of Escape From The Loneliness Which Afflicts Most Men And Women Throughout The Greater Part Of Their Lives.

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

All The Important Human Advances That We Know Of Since Historical Times Began Have Been Due To Individuals Of Whom The Majority Faced Virulent Public Opposition.

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.

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

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

Science Is No Substitute For Virtue; The Heart Is As Necessary For A Good Life As The Head.

Writing Can Be Either Readable Or Precise, But Not At The Same Time.

In Former Days, Men Sold Themselves To The Devil To Acquire Magical Powers. Nowadays They Acquire Those Powers From Science, And Find Themselves Compelled To Become Devils. There Is No Hope For The World Unless Power Can Be Tamed, And Brought Into The Service, Not Of This Or That Group Of Fanatical Tyrants, But Of The Whole Human Race, White And Yellow And Black, Fascist And Communist And Democrat; For Science Has Made It Inevitable That All Must Live Or All Must Die.

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

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

The Greatest Challenge To Any Thinker Is Stating The Problem In A Way That Will Allow A Solution.

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.

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

To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

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

...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.

The Most Essential Characteristic Of Scientific Technique Is That It Proceeds From Experiment, Not From Tradition. The Experimental Habit Of Mind Is A Difficult One For Most People To Maintain; Indeed, The Science Of One Generation Has Already Become The Tradition Of The Next

Philosophy, Though Unable To Tell Us With Certainty What Is The True Answer To The Doubts Which It Raises, Is Able To Suggest Many Possibilities Which Enlarge Our Thoughts And Free Them From The Tyranny Of Custom.

Among Human Beings, The Subjection Of Women Is Much More Complete At A Certain Level Of Civilization Than It Is Among Savages. And The Subjection Is Always Reinforced By Morality.

The Chicken Noticed That The Farmer Came Every Day To Feed It. It Predicted That The Farmer Would Continue To Bring Food Every Day. Inductivists Think That The Chicken Had "extrapolated" Its Observations Into A Theory, And That Each Feeding Time Added Justification To That Theory. Then One Day The Farmer Came And Wrung The Chicken's Neck. This Inductively Justifies The Conclusion That Induction Cannot Justify Any Conclusion.

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.

There Is... In Our Day, A Powerful Antidote To Nonsense, Which Hardly Existed In Earlier Times - I Mean Science. Science Cannot Be Ignored Or Rejected, Because It Is Bound Up With Modern Technique; It Is Essential Alike To Prosperity In Peace And To Victory In War. That Is, Perhaps From An Intellectual Point Of View, The Most Hopeful Feature Of Our Age, And The One Which Makes It Most Likely That We Shall Escape Complete Submersion In Some New Or Old Superstition.

Power Is Sweet; It Is A Drug, The Desire For Which Increases With A Habit.

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.

In Human Relations One Should Penetrate To The Core Of Loneliness In Each Person And Speak To That.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

I Do Not Pretend To Be Able To Prove That There Is No God. I Equally Cannot Prove That Satan Is A Fiction. The Christian God May Exist; So May The Gods Of Olympus, Or Of Ancient Egypt, Or Of Babylon. But No One Of These Hypotheses Is More Probable Than Any Other: They Lie Outside The Region Of Even Probable Knowledge, And Therefore There Is No Reason To Consider Any Of Them.

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

A Generation Educated In Fearless Freedom Will Have Wider And Bolder Hopes Than Are Possible To Us

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

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

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

Public Opinion Is Always More Tyrannical Towards Those Who Obviously Fear It Than Towards Those Who Feel Indifferent To It.

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.

To Like Many People Spontaneously And Without Effort Is Perhaps The Greatest Of All Sources Of Personal Happiness.

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

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

Love And Knowledge Led Upwards To The Heavens.

It Is A Waste Of Energy To Be Angry With A Man Who Behaves Badly, Just As It Is To Be Angry With A Car That Won't Go.

A Fanatical Belief In Democracy Makes Democratic Institutions Impossible.

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

Mathematical Logic

The Happiness That Is Genuinely Satisfying Is Accompanied By The Fullest Exercise Of Our Faculties And The Fullest Realization Of The World In Which We Live.

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

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.

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

Dread Of Disaster Makes Everybody Act In The Very Way That Increases The Disaster.

Force Plays A Much Larger Part In The Government Of The World Than It Did Before 1914, And What Is Especially Alarming, Force Tends Increasingly To Fall Into The Hands Of Those Who Are Enemies Of Civilization.

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.

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

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

The Resistance To A New Idea Increases By The Square Of Its Importance.

Obscenity Is Whatever Happens To Shock Some Elderly And Ignorant Magistrate.

No Opinion Has Ever Been Too Errant To Become A Creed.

When You Are Studying Any Matter Or Considering Any Philosophy, Ask Yourself Only: What Are The Facts, And What Is The Truth That The Facts Bear Out. Never Let Yourself Be Diverted By What You Wish To Believe, But Look Only And Surely At What Are The Facts.

Education Ought To Foster The Wish For Truth, Not The Conviction That Some Particular Creed Is The Truth.

These Illustrations Suggest Four General Maxims[...]. The First Is: Remember That Your Motives Are Not Always As Altruistic As They Seem To Yourself. The Second Is: Don't Over-estimate Your Own Merits. The Third Is: Don't Expect Others To Take As Much Interest In You As You Do Yourself. And The Fourth Is: Don't Imagine That Most People Give Enough Thought To You To Have Any Special Desire To Persecute You.

We Are Faced With The Paradoxical Fact That Education Has Become One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence And Freedom Of Thought.

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.

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

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

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.

Government Can Easily Exist Without Laws, But Law Cannot Exist Without Government.

The Axiom Of Choice Is Necessary To Select A Set From An Infinite Number Of Socks, But Not An Infinite Number Of Shoes.

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

None But A Coward Dares To Boast That He Has Never Known Fear.

Indemnity For The Past And Security For The Future.

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

Education, And The Life Of The Mind Generally, Is A Matter In Which Individual Initiative Is The Chief Thing Needed; The Function Of The State Should Begin And End With Insistence On Some Kind Of Education, And, If Possible, A Kind Which Promotes Mental Individualism, Not A Kind Which Happens To Conform To The Prejudices Of Government Officials.

Brief And Powerless Is Man's Life; On Him And All His Race The Slow, Sure Doom Falls Pitiless And Dark.

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.

In Astronomy, The Law Of Gravitation Is Plainly Better Worth Knowing Than The Position Of A Particular Planet On A Particular Night, Or Even On Every Night Throughout A Year. There Are In The Law A Splendour And Simplicity And Sense Of Mastery Which Illuminate A Mass Of Otherwise Uninteresting Details. But In History The Matter Is Far Otherwise. Historical Facts, Many Of Them, Have An Intrinsic Value, A Profound Interest On Their Own Account, Which Makes Them Worthy Of Study, Quite Apart From Any Possibility Of Linking Them Together By Means Of Causal Laws.

Insight, Untested And Unsupported, Is An Uncertain Guarantee Of The Truth.

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