Background Image

...

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.

-Bertrand Russell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Whole Conception Of

Bertrand Russell

...

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.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Bertrand Russell

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.

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.

Curious Learning Not Only Makes Unpleasant Things Less Unpleasant But Also Makes Pleasant Things More Pleasant.

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

Righteous Indignation

We Must Be Sceptical Even Of Our Scepticism.

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.

Philosophy Is An Unusually Ingenious Attempt To Think Fallaciously.

The More You Complain The Longer God Lets You Live

Funny Bumper Sticker

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.

To Be Happy In This World, Especially When Youth Is Past, It Is Necessary To Feel Oneself Not Merely An Isolated Individual Whose Day Will Soon Be Over, But Part Of The Stream Of Life Flowing On From The First Germ To The Remote And Unknown Future.

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.

I Cannot Escape From The Conclusion That The Great Ages Of Progress Have Depended Upon A Small Number Of Individuals Of Transcendent Ability.

Artists Are On The Average Less Happy Than Men Of Science.

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.

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.

Next To Enjoying Ourselves, The Next Greatest Pleasure Consists In Preventing Others From Enjoying Themselves, Or, More Generally, In The Acquisition Of Power.

I Do Not Pretend That Birth Control Is The Only Way In Which Population Can Be Kept From Increasing. There Are Others, Which, One Must Suppose, Opponents Of Birth Control Would Prefer.

But If Thought Is To Become The Possession Of Many, Not The Privilege Of The Few, We Must Have Done With Fear. It Is Fear That Holds Men Back - Fear Lest Their Cherished Beliefs Should Prove Delusions, Fear Lest The Institutions By Which They Live Should Prove Harmful, Fear Lest They Themselves Should Prove Less Worthy Of Respect Than They Have Supposed Themselves To Be.

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

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

Truth Is A Shining Goddess, Always Veiled, Always Distant, Never Wholly Approachable, But Worthy Of All The Devotion Of Which The Human Spirit Is Capable.

Analytic It Is Clear That The Definition Of "logic" Or "mathematics" Must Be Sought By Trying To Give A New Definition Of The Old Notion Of "analytic" Propositions.

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

Africans Had To Be Taught That Nudity Is Wicked; This Was Done Very Cheaply By Missionaries.

To Expect A Personality To Survive The Disintegration Of The Brain Is Like Expecting A Cricket Club To Survive When All Of Its Members Are Dead.

Human Nature Being What It Is, People Will Insist Upon Getting Some Pleasure Out Of Life.

The Twin Conceptions Of Sin And Vindictive Punishment Seem To Be At The Root Of Much That Is Most Vigorous, Both In Religion And Politics.

Teachers Are More Than Any Other Group The Guardians Of Civilization.

When One Admits That Nothing Is Certain One Must, I Think, Also Admit That Some Things Are Much More Nearly Certain Than Others.

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.

What Men Really Want Is Not Knowledge But Certainty.

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.

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.

Religions That Teach Brotherly Love Have Been Used As An Excuse For Persecution, And Our Profoundest Scientific Insight Is Made Into A Means Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

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

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.

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.

The Solution Of The Difficulties Which Formerly Surrounded The Mathematical Infinite Is Probably The Greatest Achievement Of Which Our Age Has To Boast.

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

Americans Need Rest, But Do Not Know It. I Believe This To Be A Large Part Of The Explanation Of The Crime Wave In The United States.

Even In Civilized Mankind Faint Traces Of Monogamous Instinct Can Be Perceived.

Only Six Need Be Attempted.

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.

The Moral Thing I Should Wish To Say To Them Is Very Simple; I Should Say: "love Is Wise - Hatred Is Foolish." In This World, Which Is Getting More And More Closely Interconnected, We Have To Learn To Tolerate Each Other.

One's Work Is Never So Bad As It Appears On Bad Days, Nor So Good As It Appears On Good Days.

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.

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.

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.

Written Words Differ From Spoken Words In Being Material Structures. A Spoken Word Is A Process In The Physical World, Having An Essential Time-order; A Written Word Is A Series Of Pieces Of Matter, Having An Essential Space-order.

Whether Science-and Indeed Civilization In General-can Long Survive Depends Upon Psychology, That Is To Say, It Depends Upon What Human Beings Desire.

Boys And Young Men Acquire Readily The Moral Sentiments Of Their Social Milieu, Whatever These Sentiments May Be.

Love Is A Slippery Eel That Bites Like Hell

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 Idea That The Poor Should Have Leisure Has Always Been Shocking To The Rich.

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.

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 His Youth, Wordsworth Sympathized With The French Revolution, Went To France, Wrote Good Poetry And Had A Natural Daughter. At This Period, He Was A Bad Man. Then He Became Good, Abandoned His Daughter, Adopted Correct Principles And Wrote Bad Poetry.

One Should As A Rule Respect Public Opinion In So Far As Is Necessary To Avoid Starvation And To Keep Out Of Prison, But Anything That Goes Beyond This Is Voluntary Submission To An Unnecessary Tyranny.

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

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.

I Do Not Pretend To Start With Precise Questions. I Do Not Think You Can Start With Anything Precise. You Have To Achieve Such Precision As You Can, As You Go Along.

Our Great Democracies Still Tend To Think That A Stupid Man Is More Likely To Be Honest Than A Clever Man, And Our Politicians Take Advantage Of This Prejudice By Pretending To Be Even More Stupid Than Nature Has Made Them.

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.

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

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.

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

Neither Acquiescence In Skepticism Nor Acquiescence In Dogma Is What Education Should Produce.

The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

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.

People Seem Good While They Are Oppressed, But They Only Wish To Become Oppressors In Their Turn: Life Is Nothing But A Competition To Be The Criminal Rather Than The Victim.

Reason Is A Harmonising, Controlling Force Rather Than A Creative One.

Fools And Fanatics Are Always So Certain Of Themselves.

Thought Provoking

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

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

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.

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

The Camera Is As Subjective As We Are.

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

There Is Much Pleasure To Be Gained From Useless Knowledge.

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

A Million Million Years Gives Us Some Time To Prepare For The End . . . Let Us Make The Best Of It.

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 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.

There Was A Law In Connecticut - I Believe It Is Still Formally Unrepealed - Making It Illegal For A Man To Kiss His Wife On Sunday.

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.

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.

Undoubtedly The Desire For Food Has Been And Still Is One Of The Main Causes Of Political Events.

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.

The Happy Life Is To An Extraordinary Extent The Same As The Good Life.

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

For Love Of Domination We Must Substitute Equality; For Love Of Victory We Must Substitute Justice; For Brutality We Must Substitute Intelligence; For Competition We Must Substitute Cooperation. We Must Learn To Think Of The Human Race As One Family.

In Emancipation From The Fears That Beset The Slave Of Circumstance He Will Experience A Profound Joy, And Through All The Vicissitudes Of His Outward Life He Will Remain In The Depths Of His Being A Happy Man.

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.

This Illustrates An Important Truth, Namely, That The Worse Your Logic, The More Interesting The Consequences To Which It Gives Rise.

[kant] Was Like Many People: In Intellectual Matters He Was Skeptical, But In Moral Matters He Believed Imjplicitly In The Maximx That He Had Imbibed At His Mother's Knee.

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.

He Will See Himself And Life And The World As Truly As Our Human Limitations Will Permit; Realizing The Brevity And Minuteness Of Human Life, He Will Realize Also That In Individual Minds Is Concentrated Whatever Of Value The Known Universe Contains. And He Will See That The Man Whose Mind Mirrors The World Becomes In A Sense As Great As The World. In Emancipation From The Fears That Beset The Slave Of Circumstance He Will Experience A Profound Joy, And Through All The Vicissitudes Of His Outward Life He Will Remain In The Depths Of His Being A Happy Man.

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

Man Has Existed For About A Million Years. He Has Possessed Writing For About 6,000 Years, Agriculture Somewhat Longer, But Perhaps Not Much Longer. Science, As A Dominant Factor In Determining The Belief Of Educated Men, Has Existed For About 300 Years; As A Source Of Economic Technique, For About 150 Years. In This Brief Period It Has Proved Itself An Incredibly Powerful Revolutionary Force. When We Consider How Recently It Has Risen To Power, We Find Ourselves Forced To Believe That We Are At The Very Beginning Of Its Work In Transforming Human Life.

One Must Expect A War Between U.s.a. And U.s.s.r. Which Will Begin With The Total Destruction Of London. I Think The War Will Last 30 Years, And Leave A World Without Civilised People, From Which Everything Will Have To Build Afresh - A Process Taking (say) 500 Years.

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

No Man Can Be A Good Teacher Unless He Has Feelings Of Warm Affection Toward His Pupils And A Genuine Desire To Impart To Them What He Believes To Be Of Value.

I've Always Thought Respectable People Scoundrels, And I Look Anxiously At My Face Every Morning For Signs Of My Becoming A Scoundrel.

People Who Are Vigorous And Brutal Often Find War Enjoyable.

A Habit Of Basing Convictions Upon Evidence, And Of Giving To Them Only That Degree Or Certainty Which The Evidence Warrants, Would, If It Became General, Cure Most Of The Ills From Which The World Suffers.

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.

How About Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was It Really He Who Ate The Apple? Or Was It Homo Pekiniensis?

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

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.

When I Found Myself Regarded As Respectable, I Began To Wonder What Sins I Had Committed. I Must Be Very Wicked, I Thought. I Began To Engage In The Most Uncomfortable Introspection.

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

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!'.

Do Not Feel Envious Of The Happiness Of Those Who Live In A Fool's Paradise, For Only A Fool Will Think That Is Happiness.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

No Carthaginian Denied Moloch, Because To Do So Would Have Required More Courage That Was Required To Face Death In Battle.

The Puritanism Of Christianity Has Played Havoc With The Moderation That An Enlightened And Tolerant Critical Spirit Would Have Produced. I've Noticed That In Whatever Country, County, Town, Or Other Region There Is A Regulation Enjoining Temperance, The Population Seems To Be Entirely Composed Of Teetotallers And Drunkards. There's A Bible On That Shelf There. But I Keep It Next To Voltaire - Poison And Antidote.

The Difficulty Is Old, But None The Less Real. An Omnipotent Being Who Created A World Containing Evil Not Due To Sin Must Himself Be At Least Partially Evil.

I Have Come To Realize That An Early Symptom Of Approaching Mental Illness Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important. If You Consider Your Work Very Important You Should Take A Day Off.

A Generation That Cannot Endure Boredom Will Be A Generation Of Little Men, Of Men Unduly Divorced From The Slow Process Of Nature, Of Men In Whom Every Vital Impulse Slowly Withers As Though They Were Cut Flowers In A Vase.

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

When We Have Told How Things Behave When They Are Electrified, And Under What Circumstances They Are Electrified, We Have Told All There Is To Know

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

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

They Must Often Change, Who Would Be Constant In Happiness Or Wisdom. Those Who Continually Search For Happiness Will Never Find It. Happiness Is Made, Not Found. To Be Without Some Of The Things You Want Is An Indispensable Part Of Happiness.

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

The Axiomatic Method Has Many Advantages Over Honest Work.

Love Is Wise; Hatred Is Foolish. In This World, Which Is Getting More And More Closely Interconnected, We Have To Learn To Tolerate Each Other, We Have To Learn To Put Up With The Fact That Some People Say Things That We Don't Like. We Can Only Live Together In That Way. But If We Are To Live Together, And Not Die Together, We Must Learn A Kind Of Charity And A Kind Of Tolerance, Which Is Absolutely Vital To The Continuation Of Human Life On This Planet.

Some People Would Rather Die Than Think.

We Believe, First And Foremost, What Makes Us Feel That We Are Fine Fellows.

Beware The Man Of The Single Book

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

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.

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

Idealism And Realism

Science Is What We Know, And Philosophy Is What We Don't Know.

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 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

Happiness Is Not Best Achieved By Those Who Seek It Directly.

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.

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

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

One Is Often Told That It Is A Very Wrong Thing To Attack Religion, Because Religion Makes Men Virtuous. So I Am Told; I Have Not Noticed It.

Religion Is Something Left Over From The Infancy Of Our Intelligence, It Will Fade Away As We Adopt Reason And Science As Our Guidelines.

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

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

The More We Realize Our Minuteness And Our Impotence In The Face Of Cosmic Forces, The More Amazing Becomes What Human Beings Have Achieved.

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

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.

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

Continuity Of Purpose Is One Of The Most Essential Ingredients Of Happiness In The Long Run, And For Most Men That Comes Chiefly Through Their Work.

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.

Collective Fear Stimulates Herd Instinct, And Tends To Produce Ferocity Toward Those Who Are Not Regarded As Members Of The Herd.

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.

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

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.

All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation.

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

Upon Hearing Via Littlewood An Exposition On The Theory Of Relativity: To Think I Have Spent My Life On Absolute Muck.

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

Every Great Idea Starts Out As A Blasphemy.

More And More People Are Becoming Unable To Accept Traditional [religious] Beliefs. If They Think That, Apart From These Beliefs, There Is No Reason For Kindly Behaviour, The Results May Be Needlessly Unfortunate. That Is Why It Is Important To Show That No Supernatural Reasons Are Needed To Make [people] Kind And To Prove That Only Through Kindness Can The Human Race Achieve Happiness.

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.

A Process Which Led From The Amoeba To Man Appeared To The Philosophers To Be Obviously A Progress Though Whether The Amoeba Would Agree With This Opinion Is Not Known.

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.

Order, Unity, And Continuity Are Human Inventions, Just As Truly As Catalogues And Encyclopedias.

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not. I Am, However, Quite Certain That I Am Having Certain Experiences, Whether They Be Those Of A Dream Or Those Of Waking Life.

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.

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.

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.

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

People Are Zealous For A Cause When They Are Not Quite Positive That It Is True.

Positive Thinking

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.

In A Balkan Country, Not So Many Years Ago, A Party Which Had Been Beaten By A Narrow Margin In A General Election Retrieved Its Fortunes By Shooting A Sufficient Number Of The Representatives Of The Other Side To Give It A Majority. . . . Cromwell And Robespierre . . . Acted Likewise.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

In Mass Cruelty, The Expulsions Of Germans Ordered By The Russians Fall Not Very Far Short Of The Atrocities Perpetrated By The Nazis.

If You Question Any Candid Person Who Is No Longer Young, He Is Very Likely To Tell You That, Having Tasted Life In This World, He Has No Wish To Begin Again As A "new Boy" In Another.

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

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.

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

The 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.

The Essence Of Life Is Doing Things For Their Own Sakes.

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.

Moral Progress Has Consisted In The Main Of Protest Against Cruel Customs, And Of Attempts To Enlarge Human Sympathy.

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 Spreading His Ideas, Plato Was Willing To Employ Emotional Appeals, State Propaganda, And The Use Of Force.

Trending Author

Tamara Ecclestone

Robert Green Ingersoll

Category