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The State Is A Collection Of Officials, Different For Difference Purposes, Drawing Comfortable Incomes So Long As The Status Quo Is Preserved. The Only Alteration They Are Likely To Desire In The Status Quo Is An Increase Of Bureaucracy And The Power Of Bureaucrats.

-Bertrand Russell

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The State Is A

Bertrand Russell

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The State Is A Collection Of Officials, Different For Difference Purposes, Drawing Comfortable Incomes So Long As The Status Quo Is Preserved. The Only Alteration They Are Likely To Desire In The Status Quo Is An Increase Of Bureaucracy And The Power Of Bureaucrats.

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Citizens As Conceived By Governments Are Persons Who Admire The Status Quo And Are Prepared To Exert Themselves For Its Preservation. Oddly Enough, While All Governments Aim At Producing Men Of This Type To The Exclusion Of All Other Types, Their Heroes In The Past Are Of Exactly The Sort That They Aim At Preventing In The Present. Americans Admire George Washington And Jefferson, But Imprison Those Who Share Their Political Opinions.

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.

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

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.

It Is False To Suggest That Men Must Turn Away From His Desires In The Interest Of A Higher Duty. Men Only Responds To Duty If He Desires To Do So. To Understand Men, You Must Understand Their Desires And The Relative Strength Of Those Desires.

Philosophy Bakes No Bread

The Slave Is Doomed To Worship Time And Fate And Death, Because They Are Greater Than Anything He Finds In Himself, And Because All His Thoughts Are Of Things Which They Devour.

In The Ordinary Business Of Life Punctuality Is . . . Necessary.

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

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.

Good Nature Is, Of All Moral Qualities, The One That The World Needs Most, And Good Nature Is The Result Of Ease And Security, Not Of A Life Of Arduous Struggle.

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

Ants And Savages Put Strangers To Death.

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.

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

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.

All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation.

Love And Knowledge Led Upwards To The Heavens.

To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

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

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

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

In The Part Of This Universe That We Know There Is Great Injustice, And Often The Good Suffer, And Often The Wicked Prosper, And One Hardly Knows Which Of Those Is The More Annoying.

Philosophy Is An Unusually Ingenious Attempt To Think Fallaciously.

The Whole Of Theology, In Regard To Hell No Less Than To Heaven, Takes It For Granted That Man Is What Is Of Most Importance In The Universe Of Created Beings. Since All Theologians Are Men, This Postulate Has Met With Little Opposition.

We Do Not Like To Be Robbed Of An Enemy; We Want Someone To Hate When We Suffer. It Is So Depressing To Think That We Suffer Because We Are Fools; Yet, Taking Mankind In The Mass, That Is The Truth.

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.

War Can Only Be Abolished By The Establishment Of A World Government.

World Government

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

In Spite Of Death, The Mark And Seal Of The Parental Control, Man Is Yet Free, During His Brief Years, To Examine, To Criticise, To Know, And In Imagination To Create. To Him Alone, In The World With Which He Is Acquainted, This Freedom Belongs; And In This Lies His Superiority To The Resistless Forces That Control His Outward Life.

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

Americans Need Rest, But Do Not Know It.

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 Objections To Religion Are Of Two Sorts - Intellectual And Moral. The Intellectual Objection Is That There Is No Reason To Suppose Any Religion True; The Moral Objection Is That Religious Precepts Date From A Time When Men Were More Cruel Than They Are And Therefore Tend To Perpetuate Inhumanities Which The Moral Conscience Of The Age Would Otherwise Outgrow.

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.

Only In Thought Is Man A God; In Action And Desire We Are The Slaves Of Circumstance.

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.

To A Mind Of Sufficient Intellectual Power, The Whole Of Mathematics Would Appear Trivial, As Trivial As The Statement That A Four-footed Animal Is An Animal.

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

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 Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Have Gone Hand-in-hand. It Is Because Fear Is At The Basis Of Those Two Things. In This World We Can Now Begin A Little To Understand Things, And A Little To Master Them By The Help Of Science, Which Has Forced Its Way Step By Step Against The Christian Religion, Against The Churches, And Against The Opposition Of All The Old Precepts.

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

The Triumph Of Science Has Been Mainly Due To Its Practical Utility, And There Has Been An Attempt To Divorce This Aspect From That Of Theory, Thus Making Science More And More A Technique, And Less And Less A Doctrine As To The Nature Of The World. The Penetration Of This Point Of View To Philosophers Is Very Recent.

The Fact That An Opinion Has Been Widely Held Is No Evidence Whatever That It Is Not Utterly Absurd; Indeed In View Of The Silliness Of The Majority Of Mankind, A Widely Spread Belief Is More Likely To Be Foolish Than Sensible.

Of Course Not. After All, I May Be Wrong.

The Place Of The Father In The Modern Suburban Family Is A Very Small One, Particularly If He Plays Golf.

Dont Let The Old Break You; Let The Love Make You

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

Cynicism Such As One Finds Very Frequently Among The Most Highly Educated Young Men And Women Of The West, Results From The Combination Of Comfort And Powerlessness.

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

The Observer, When He Seems To Himself To Be Observing A Stone, Is Really, If Physics Is To Be Believed, Observing The Effects Of The Stone Upon Himself.

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

It Is Not What The Man Of Science Believes That Distinguishes Him, But How And Why He Believes It. His Beliefs Are Tentative, Not Dogmatic; They Are Based On Evidence, Not On Authority Or Intuition.

Religion: A Set Of Beliefs Held As Dogmas, Dominating The Conduct Of Life, Going Beyond Or Contrary To Evidence, And Inculcated By Methods Which Are Emotional Or Authoritarian, Not Intellectual.

The Ten Commandments Should Be Headed Like An Examination Paper: No More Than Six To Be Attempted.

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

After Ages During Which The Earth Produced Harmless Trilobites And Butterflies, Evolution Progressed To The Point At Which It Generated Neros, Genghis Khans, And Hitlers. This, However, Is A Passing Nightmare; In Time The Earth Will Become Again Incapable Of Supporting Life, And Peace Will Return.

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.

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.

Opinions Which Justify Cruelty Are Inspired By Cruel Impulses.

The Atomic Bomb Embodies The Results Of A Combination Genius And Patience As Remarkable As Any In The History Of Mankind.

Common Sense, However It Tries, Cannot Avoid Being Surprised From Time To Time.

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

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

...the Nonexistence Of God Makes More Difference To Some Of Us Than To Others. To Me, It Means That There Is No Absolute Morality, That Moralities Are Sets Of Social Conventions Devised By Humans To Satisfy Their Needs.

If A Black Death Could Be Spread Throughout The World Once In Every Generation Survivors Could Procreate Freely Without Making The World Too Full.

An Individual Human Existence Should Be Like A River

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

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

So Far I Have Been Speaking Of Theoretical Science, Which Is An Attempt To Understand The World. Practical Science, Which Is An Attempt To Change The World, Has Been Important From The First, And Has Continually Increased In Importance, Until It Has Almost Ousted Theoretical Science From Men's Thoughts.

This Idea Of Weapons Of Mass Extermination Is Utterly Horrible And Is Something Which No One With One Spark Of Humanity Can Tolerate.

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

To Avoid The Various Foolish Opinions To Which Mankind Are Prone, No Superhuman Genius Is Required. A Few Simple Rules Will Keep You, Not From All Error, But From Silly Error.

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

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

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.

In Democratic Countries, The Most Important Private Organizations Are Economic. Unlike Secret Societies, They Are Able To Exercise Their Terrorism Without Illegality, Since They Do Not Threaten To Kill Their Enemies, But Only To Starve Them.

All Forms Of Fear Produce Fatigue.

No One Ever Gossips About The Virtues Of Others

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.

Perhaps The Best Hope For The Future Of Mankind Is That Ways Will Be Found Of Increasing The Scope And Intensity Of Sympathy.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

With Equal Passion I Have Sought Knowledge. I Have Wished To Understand The Hearts Of Men. I Have Wished To Know Why The Stars Shine. And I Have Tried To Apprehend The Pythagorean Power By Which Number Holds Sway About The Flux. A Little Of This, But Not Much, I Have Achieved.

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

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.

The Examination System, And The Fact That Instruction Is Treated Mainly As A Training For A Livelihood, Leads The Young To Regard Knowledge From A Purely Utilitarian Point Of View As The Road To Money, Not As The Gateway To Wisdom.

What Makes A Free Thinker Is Not His Beliefs, But The Way In Which He Holds Them. If He Holds Them Because His Elders Told Him They Were True When He Was Young, Or If He Holds Them Because If He Did Not He Would Be Unhappy, His Thought Is Not Free; But If He Holds Them Because, After Careful Thought, He Finds A Balance In Their Favor, Then His Thought Is Free, However Odd His Conclusions May Seem.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Freedom In Education Has Many Aspects. There Is First Of All Freedom To Learn Or Not To Learn. Then There Is Freedom As To What To Learn. And In Later Education There Is Freedom Of Opinion.

The Main Thing Needed To Make Men Happy Is Intelligence.

What's The Difference Between A Bright, Inquisitive Five-year-old, And A Dull, Stupid Nineteen-year-old? Fourteen Years Of The British Educational System.

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.

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.

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.

A Man Without A Bias Cannot Write Interesting History - If Indeed Such A Man Exists.

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.

I Think Periods Of Browsing During Which No Occupation Is Imposed From Without Are Important In Youth Because They Give Time For The Formation Of These Apparently Fugitive But Really Vital Impressions.

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

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.

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

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 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 People Begin To Philosophize They Seem To Think It Necessary To Make Themselves Artificially Stupid.

A World Full Of Happiness Is Not Beyond Human Power To Create; The Obstacles Imposed By Inanimate Nature Are Not Insuperable. The Real Obstacles Lie In The Heart Of Man, And The Cure For These Is A Firm Hope, Informed And Fortified By Thought.

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

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

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

Life Is Just One Cup Of Coffee After Another, And Don't Look For Anything Else.

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

A Sense Of Duty Is Useful In Work But Offensive In Personal Relations. People Wish To Be Liked, Not To Be Endured With Patient Resignation.

... The Whole World Of Loneliness, Poverty, And Pain Make A Mockery Of What Human Life Should Be.

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.

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

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

The Qualities Most Needed Are Charity And Tolerance, Not Some Form Of Fanatical Faith Such As Is Offered To Us By The Various Rampant Isms

The Opinions That Are Held With Passion Are Always Those For Which No Good Ground Exists; Indeed The Passion Is The Measure Of The Holders Lack Of Rational Conviction. Opinions In Politics And Religion Are Almost Always Held Passionately.

Critical Thinking

The Man Who Pursues Happiness Wisely Will Aim At The Possession Of A Number Of Subsidiary Interests In Addition To Those Central Ones Upon Which His Life Is Built.

Socrates Was The Chief Saint Of The Stoics Throughout Their History ; His Attitude At The Time Of His Trial, His Refusal To Escape, His Calmness In The Face Of Death , And His Contention That The Perpetrator Of Injustice Injures Himself More Than His Victim, All Fitted In Perfectly With Stoic Teaching. So Did His Indifference To Heat And Cold, His Plainness In Matters Of Food And Dress, And His Complete Independence Of All Bodily Comforts.

Hitler Is An Outcome Of Rousseau.

The Use Of Force Stands In Need Of Control By A Public Neutral Authority, In The Interests Of Liberty No Less Than Of Justice. Within A Nation, This Public Authority Will Naturally Be The State; In Relations Between Nations, If The Present Anarchy Is To Cease, It Will Have To Be Some International Parliament.

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

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

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

The Knowledge Exists By Which Universal Happiness Can Be Secured; The Chief Obstacle To Its Utilization For That Purpose Is The Teaching Of Religion. Religion Prevents Our Children From Having A Rational Education; Religion Prevents Us From Removing The Fundamental Causes Of War; Religion Prevents Us From Teaching The Ethic Of Scientific Cooperation In Place Of The Old Fierce Doctrines Of Sin And Punishment. 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.

There Is No Nonsense So Errant That It Cannot Be Made The Creed Of The Vast Majority By Adequate Governmental Action.

Knowledge And Power

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

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

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

Men Fear Thought As They Fear Nothing Else On Earth - More Than Ruin, More Even Than Death.

There Is No Reason To Suppose That The World Had A Beginning At All. The Idea That Things Must Have A Beginning Is Really Due To The Poverty Of Our Thoughts.

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

The Habit Of Looking To The Future And Thinking That The Whole Meaning Of The Present Lies In What It Will Bring Forth Is A Pernicious One. There Can Be No Value In The Whole Unless There Is Value In The Parts.

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

Idealism And Realism

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.

The Process Of Philosophizing, To My Mind, Consists Mainly In Passing From Those Obvious, Vague, Ambiguous Things, That We Feel Quite Sure Of, To Something Precise, Clear, Definite, Which By Reflection And Analysis We Find Is Involved In The Vague Thing That We Start From, And Is, So To Speak, The Real Truth Of Which That Vague Thing Is A Sort Of Shadow.

The Axiomatic Method Has Many Advantages Over Honest Work.

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.

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

A Drop Of Water Is Not Immortal; It Can Be Resolved Into Oxygen And Hydrogen. If, Therefore, A Drop Of Water Were To Maintain That It Had A Quality Of Aqueousness Which Would Survive Its Dissolution We Should Be Inclined To Be Skeptical. In Like Manner We Know That The Brain Is Not Immortal.

We Need A Science To Save Us From Science.

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

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

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.

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.

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

When You Come To Look Into This Argument From Design, It Is A Most Astonishing Thing That People Can Believe That This World, With All The Things That Are In It, With All Its Defects, Should Be The Best That Omnipotence And Omniscience Has Been Able To Produce In Millions Of Years.

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.

People Who Are Vigorous And Brutal Often Find War Enjoyable.

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

If The State Does Not Acquire Supremacy Over [vast Private] Enterprises, It Becomes Their Puppet, And They Become The Real State.

All That Passes For Knowledge Can Be Arranged In A Hierarchy Of Degrees Of Certainty, With Arithmetic And The Facts Of Perception At The Top.

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

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.

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

The Fundamental Defect Of Fathers, In Our Competitive Society, Is That They Want Their Children To Be A Credit To Them. We All Feel Instinctively, That Our Children's Success Reflect Glory Upon Ourselves, While Their Failures Make Us Feel Shame. Unfortunately, The Successes Which Cause Us To Swell With Pride Are Often Of An Undesirable Kind.... Neither Happiness Nor Virtue, But Worldly Success, Is What The Average Father Desires For His Children.

Calculus Required Continuity, And Continuity Was Supposed To Require The Infinitely Little; But Nobody Could Discover What The Infinitely Little Might Be.

It Can Be Shown That A Mathematical Web Of Some Kind Can Be Woven About Any Universe Containing Several Objects. The Fact That Our Universe Lends Itself To Mathematical Treatment Is Not A Fact Of Any Great Philosophical Significance.

The Purpose Of Education Is To Teach A Defense Against Eloquence.

I Never Held Negroes To Be Inherently Inferior. The Statement In Marriage And Morals Refers To Environmental Conditioning. I Have Had It Withdrawn From Subsequent Editions Because It Is Clearly Ambiguous.

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

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

Mathematical Logic

No Satisfaction Based Upon Self-deception Is Solid.

Every Living Thing Is A Sort Of Imperialist, Seeking To Transform As Much As Possible Of Its Environment Into Itself . . . When We Compare The (present) Human Population Of The Globe With . . . That Of Former Times, We See That "chemical Imperialism" Has Been . . . The Main End To Which Human Intelligence Has Been Devoted.

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little. At Least, We Feel Too Little Of Those Creative Emotions From Which A Good Life Springs.

By Self-interest, Man Has Become Gregarious, But In Instinct He Has Remained To A Great Extent Solitary; Hence The Need Of Religion And Morality To Reinforce Self-interest.

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.

We Know That The Exercise Of Virtue Should Be Its Own Reward, And It Seems To Follow That The Enduring Of It On The Part Of The Patient Should Be Its Own Punishment.

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.

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

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

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

Moreover, The Attitude That One Ought To Believe Such And Such A Proposition, Independently Of The Question Whether There Is Evidence In Its Favor, Is An Attitude Which Produces Hostility To Evidence And Causes Us To Close Our Minds To Every Fact That Does Not Suit Our Prejudices.

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

I Feel As If One Would Only Discover On One's Death-bed What One Ought To Have Lived For, And Realise Too Late That One's Life Has Been Wasted. Any Passionate And Courageous Life Seems Good In Itself, Yet One Feels That Some Element Of Delusion Is Involved In Giving So Much Passion To Any Humanly Attainable Object. And So Irony Creeps Into The Very Springs Of One's Being.

The Search For Something Permanent Is One Of The Deepest Of The Instincts Leading Men To Philosophy.

I Wish To Propose For The Reader's Favourable Consideration A Doctrine Which May, I Fear, Appear Wildly Paradoxical And Subversive. The Doctrine In Question Is This: That It Is Undesirable To Believe A Proposition When There Is No Ground Whatever For Supposing It True.

Although This May Seem A Paradox, All Exact Science Is Based On The Idea Of Approximation. If A Man Tells You He Knows A Thing Exactly, Then You Can Be Safe In Inferring That You Are Speaking To An Inexact Man.

It Is Because Modern Education Is So Seldom Inspired By A Great Hope That It So Seldom Achieves Great Results. The Wish To Preserve The Past Rather That The Hope Of Creatingfuture Dominates The Minds Of Those Who Control The Teaching Of The Young.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

People Will Tell Us That Without The Consolations Of Religion They Would Be Intolerably Unhappy. So Far As This Is True, It Is A Coward's Argument. Nobody But A Coward Would Consciously Choose To Live In A Fool's Paradise. When A Man Suspects His Wife Of Infidelity, He Is Not Thought The Better Of For Shutting His Eyes To The Evidence. And I Cannot See Why Ignoring Evidence Should Be Contemptible In One Case And Admirable In The Other.

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.

Official Morality Has Always Been Oppressive And Negative: It Has Said "thou Shalt Not," And Has Not Troubled To Investigate The Effect Of Activities Not Forbidden By The Code.

The Practice Of Inhibiting Impulses, Which Is To A Great Extent Necessary To Civilized Life, Makes Mistakes Easier, By Preventing Experience Of The Actions To Which A Desire Would Otherwise Lead, And By Often Causing The Inhibited Impulses Themselves To Be Unnoticed Or Quickly Forgotten.

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.

And All This Madness, All This Rage, All This Flaming Death Of Our Civilization And Our Hopes, Has Been Brought About Because A Set Of Official Gentlemen, Living Luxurious Lives, Mostly Stupid, And All Without Imagination Or Heart, Have Chosen That It Should Occur Rather Than That Any One Of Them Should Suffer Some Infinitesimal Rebuff To His Country`s Pride.

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

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

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Melina Mercouri

Fred W. Friendly

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