Background Image

...

There Are Certain Things That Our Age Needs, And Certain Things That It Should Avoid. It Needs Compassion And A Wish That Mankind Should Be Happy; It Needs The Desire For Knowledge And The Determination To Eschew Pleasant Myths; It Needs, Above All, Courageous Hope And The Impulse To Creativeness.

-Bertrand Russell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

There Are Certain Things

Bertrand Russell

...

There Are Certain Things That Our Age Needs, And Certain Things That It Should Avoid. It Needs Compassion And A Wish That Mankind Should Be Happy; It Needs The Desire For Knowledge And The Determination To Eschew Pleasant Myths; It Needs, Above All, Courageous Hope And The Impulse To Creativeness.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Bertrand Russell

To Save The World Requires Faith And Courage: Faith In Reason, And Courage To Proclaim What Reason Shows To Be True.

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

Science Is What You Know, Philosophy Is What You Don't Know.

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.

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

A Fanatical Belief In Democracy Makes Democratic Institutions Impossible.

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.

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subconsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do.

When Conscious Activity Is Wholly Concentrated On Some One Definite Purpose, The Ultimate Result, For Most People, Is Lack Of Balance Accompanied By Some Form Of Nervous Disorder.

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

Punctuality Is A Quality The Need Of Which Is Bound Up With Social Co-operation. It Has Nothing To Do With The Relation Of The Soul To God, Or With Mystic Insight, Or With Any Of The Matters With Which The More Elevated And Spiritual Moralists Are Concerned.

It Is A Natural Propensity To Attribute Misfortune To Someone's Malignity.

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

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.

I Want To Say, In All Seriousness, That A Great Deal Of Harm Is Being Done In The Modern World By Belief In The Virtuousness Of Work, And That The Road To Happiness And Prosperity Lies In The Organised Diminution Of Work.

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.

This Has Been My Life. I Have Found It Worth Living, And Would Gladly Live It Again If The Second Chance Were Offered Me.

My Conclusion Is That There Is No Reason To Believe Any Of The Dogmas Of Traditional Theology And, Further, That There Is No Reason To Wish That They Were True. Man, In So Far As He Is Not Subject To Natural Forces, Is Free To Work Out His Own Destiny. The Responsibility Is His, And So Is The Opportunity.

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

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.

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

Religion And Science Are Two Aspects Of Social Life, Of Which The Former Has Been Important As Far Back As We Know Anything Of Man

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.

Emphatic And Reiterated Assertion, Especially During Childhood, Produces In Most People A Belief So Firm As To Have A Hold Even Over The Unconscious.

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

Drunkenness Is Temporary Suicide.

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.

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

Righteous Indignation

What Men Really Want Is Not Knowledge But Certainty.

Physics Is Mathematical Not Because We Know So Much About The Physical World, But Because We Know So Little; It Is Only Its Mathematical Properties That We Can Discover.

The 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.

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

Our Use Of The Phrase 'the Dark Ages' To Cover The Period From 600 To 1000 Marks Our Undue Concentration On Western Europe. [...] From India To Spain, The Brilliant Civilisation Of Islam Flourished. What Was Lost To Christendom At This Time Was Not Lost To Civilisation, But Quite The Contrary. [...] To Us It Seems That West-european Civilisation Is Civilisation, But This Is A Narrow View.

A Man's Acts Are Partly Determined By Spontaneous Impulse, Partly By The Conscious And Unconscious Effects Of The Various Groups To Which He Belongs.

You May, If You Are An Old-fashioned Schoolmaster, Wish To Consider Yourself Full Of Universal Benevolence And At The Same Time Derive Great Pleasure From Caning Boys. In Order To Reconcile These Two Desires You Have To Persuade Yourself That Caning

No Nation Was Ever So Virtuous As Each Believes Itself, And None Was Ever So Wicked As Each Believes The Other.

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.

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

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

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

When One Admits That Nothing Is Certain One Must, I Think, Also Admit That Some Things Are Much More Nearly Certain Than Others. It Is Much More Nearly Certain That We Are Assembled Here Tonight Than It Is That This Or That Political Party Is In The Right. Certainly There Are Degrees Of Certainty, And One Should Be Very Careful To Emphasize That Fact, Because Otherwise One Is Landed In An Utter Skepticism, And Complete Skepticism Would, Of Course, Be Totally Barren And Completely Useless.

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

Science And Religion

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

We Love Our Habits More Than Our Income, Often More Than Our Life.

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

In Detective Stories . . . I Alternately Identify Myself With The Murderer And The Huntsman-detective, But . . . There Are Those To Which This Vicarious Outlet Is Too Mild.

The Mind Is A Strange Machine Which Can Combine The Materials Offered To It In The Most Astonishing Ways.

The Universe May Have A Purpose, But Nothing We Know Suggests That, If So, This Purpose Has Any Similarity To Ours.

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.

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

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

Abstract Work, If One Wishes To Do It Well, Must Be Allowed To Destroy One's Humanity; One Raises A Monument Which Is At The Same Time A Tomb, In Which, Voluntarily, One Slowly Inters Oneself.

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.

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

The Legacy Of Greece To Western Philosophy Is Western Philosophy.

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

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

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.

Joy Of Life... Depends Upon A Certain Spontaneity In Regard To Sex. Where Sex Is Repressed, Only Work Remains, And A Gospel Of Work For Work's Sake Never Produced Any Work Worth Doing.

Most People Would Sooner Die Than Think; In Fact, They Do So.

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

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.

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

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

World Government

The Modern Man Thinks That Everything Ought To Be Done For The Sake Of Something Else, And Never For Its Own Sake.

The Desire For Legitimate Offspring Is, In Fact, According To The Catholic Church, The Only Motive Which Can Justify Sexual Intercourse.

An Honest Politician Will Not Be Tolerated By A Democracy Unless He Is Very Stupid ... Because Only A Very Stupid Man Can Honestly Share The Prejudices Of More Than Half The Nation.

The Really Useful Education Is That Which Follows The Direction Of The Child's Own Instinctive Interests, Supplying Knowledge For Which It Is Seeking, Not Dry, Detailed Information Wholly Out Of Relation To Its Spontaneous Desires.

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

Science Has Made Unrestricted National Sovereignty Incompatible With Human Survival. The Only Possibilities Are Now World Government Or Death.

World Government

A Habit Of Finding Pleasure In Thought Rather Than Action Is A Safeguard Against Unwisdom And Excessive Love Of Power, A Means Of Preserving Serenity In Misfortune And Peace Of Mind Among Worries. A Life Confined To What Is Personal Is Likely, Sooner Or Later, To Become Unbearably Painful; It Is Only By Windows Into A Larger And Less Fretful Cosmos That The More Tragic Parts Of Life Become Endurable.

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

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

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.

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.

The Megalomaniac Differs From The Narcissist By The Fact That He Wishes To Be Powerful Rather Than Charming, And Seeks To Be Feared Rather Than Loved. To This Type Belong Many Lunatics And Most Of The Great Men Of History.

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

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

More Important Than The Curriculum Is The Question Of The Methods Of Teaching And The Spirit In Which The Teaching Is Given

I Used Often To Go To America During Prohibition, And There Was Far More Drunkenness There Then Than Before; The Prohibition Of Pornography Has Much The Same Effect.

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

A Smell Of Petroleum Prevails Throughout.

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.

I Suppose The Advocates Of Unreason Think That There Is A Better Chance Of Profitably Deceiving The Populace If They Keep It In A State Of Effervescence.

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

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

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little.

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

Positive Thinking

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

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

Many A Man Will Have The Courage To Die Gallantly, But Will Not Have The Courage To Say, Or Even To Think, That The Cause For Which He Is Asked To Die Is An Unworthy One.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Law Of Causality, I Believe, Like Much That Passes Muster Among Philosophers, Is A Relic Of A Bygone Age, Surviving, Like The Monarchy, Only Because It Is Erroneously Supposed To Do No Harm.

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

The Wise Use Of Leisure, It Must Be Conceded, Is A Product Of Civilization And Education.

When Benjamin Franklin Invented The Lightning-rod, The Clergy, Both In England And America, With Enthusiastic Support Of George Iii, Condemned It As An Impious Attempt To Defeat The Will Of God.

England And America

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.

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 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

I Used, When I Was Younger, To Take My Holidays Walking. I Would Cover 25 Miles A Day, And When The Evening Came I Had No Need Of Anything To Keep Me From Boredom, Since The Delight Of Sitting Amply Sufficed.

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.

Hatred Of Enemies Is Easier And More Intense Than Love Of Friends. But From Men Who Are More Anxious To Injure Opponents Than To Benefit The World At Large No Great Good Is To Be Expected.

When The State Intervenes To Insure The Indoctrination Of Some Doctrine, It Does So Because There Is No Conclusive Evidence In Favor Of That Doctrine.

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.

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

What Is Best In Mathematics Deserves Not Merely To Be Learnt As A Task, But To Assimilated As A Part Of Daily Thought, And Brought Again And Again Before The Mind With Ever-renewed Encouragement.

The Fundamental Principle In The Analysis Of Propositions Containing Descriptions Is This: Every Proposition Which We Can Understand Must Be Composed Wholly Of Constituents With Which We Are Acquainted.

If The Ordinary Wage-earner Worked Four Hours A Day, There Would Be Enough For Everybody, And No Unemployment — Assuming A Certain Very Moderate Amount Of Sensible Organization. This Idea Shocks The Well-to-do, Because They Are Convinced That The Poor Would Not Know How To Use So Much Leisure.

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.

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

A Physicist Looks For Causes; That Does Not Necessarily Imply That There Are Causes Everywhere. A Man May Look For Gold Without Assuming That There Is Gold Everywhere; If He Finds Gold, Well And Good, If He Doesn't He's Had Bad Luck. The Same Is True When The Physicists Look For Causes.

Is There Any Knowledge In The World Which Is So Certain That No Reasonable Man Could Doubt It?

The Human Animal, Like Others, Is Adapted To A Certain Amount Of Struggle For Life [and] The Mere Absence Of Effort From His Life Removes An Essential Ingredient Of Happiness. [. . .] He Forgets That To Be Without Some Of The Things You Want Is An Indispensable Part Of Happiness.

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

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

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.

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

...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.

Science Seems To Be At War With Itself.... Naive Realism Leads To Physics, And Physics, If True, Shows Naive Realism To Be False. Therefore Naive Realism, If True, Is False; Therefore It Is False.

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.

True Happiness For Human Beings Is Possible Only To Those Who Develop Their Godlike Potentialities To The Utmost.

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not.

What Galileo And Newton Were To The Seventeenth Century, Darwin Was To The Nineteenth.

Patriotism Which Has The Quality Of Intoxication Is A Danger Not Only To Its Native Land But To The World, And "my Country Never Wrong" Is An Even More Dangerous Maxim Than "my Country, Right Or Wrong."

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

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.

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

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

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

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

For A Good Notation Has A Subtlety And Suggestiveness Which At Times Make It Seem Almost Like A Live Teacher.

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.

The Question Of "unreality"is A Very Important One. Misled By Grammar, The Great Majority Of Those Logicians Who Have Dealt With This Question Have Dealt With It On Mistaken Lines. They Have Regarded Grammatical Form As A Surer Guide In Analysis Than, In Fact, It Is. And They Have Not Known What Differences In Grammatical Form Are Important.

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.

In A Logically Perfect Language, There Will Be One Word And No More For Every Simple Object, And Everything That Is Not Simple Will Be Expressed By A Combination Of Words, By A Combination Derived, Of Course, From The Words For The Simple Things That Enter In, One Word For Each Simple Component.

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

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

Mathematics Is Only The Art Of Saying The Same Thing In Different Words.

I Consider The Official Catholic Attitude On Divorce, Birth Control, And Censorship Exceedingly Dangerous To Mankind.

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.

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

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.

I Suggest To Young Professors That Their First Work Should Be Written In A Jargon Only To Be Understood By The Erudite Few. With That Behind Them, They Can Ever After Say What They Have To Say In A Language 'understand Of The People.'

Sir Arthur Eddington Deduces Religion From The Fact That Atoms Do Not Obey The Laws Of Mathematics. Sir James Jeans Deduces It From The Fact That They Do.

Why Is Propaganda So Much More Successful When It Stirs Up Hatred Than When It Tries To Stir Up Friendly Feeling?

Grasshopper Always Wrong In Argument With Chicken.

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

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

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.

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

No One Gossips About Other People's Secret Virtues.

Keeping Secrets

No Other Organization Rouses Anything Like The Loyalty Aroused By The National State. And The Chief Activity Of The State Is Preparation For Large-scale Homicide.

In All Affairs It's A Healthy Thing Now And Then To Hang A Question Mark On The Things You Have Long Taken For Granted.

Psychology Often Becomes The Disease Of Which It Should Be The Cure.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

All Religions Are Both Harmful And Untrue.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Affection Cannot Be Created; It Can Only Be Liberated.

Man Can Be Scientifically Manipulated.

To Abandon The Struggle For Private Happiness, To Expel All Eagerness Of Temporary Desire, To Burn With Passion For Eternal Things-this Is Emancipation, And This Is The Free Man's Worship... United With His Fellow Men By The Strongest Of All Ties, The Tie Of A Common Doom, The Free Man Finds That A New Vision Is With Him Always, Shedding Over Every Daily Task The Light Of Love.

Machines Are Worshipped Because They Are Beautiful And Valued Because They Confer Power; They Are Hated Because They Are Hideous And Loathed Because They Impose Slavery.

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.

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

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

What The World Needs Is Not Dogma But An Attitude Of Scientific Inquiry Combined With A Belief That The Torture Of Millions Is Not Desirable, Whether Inflicted By Stalin Or By A Deity Imagined In The Likeness Of The Believer

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

A Man Is Rational In Proportion As His Intelligence Informs And Controls His Desires.

Right Conduct Can Never, Except By Some Rare Accident, Be Promoted By Ignorance Or Hindered By Knowledge.

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

Man Is A Credulous Animal, And Must Believe Something; In The Absence Of Good Grounds For Belief, He Will Be Satisfied With Bad Ones.

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.

Civilized People Cannot Fully Satisfy Their Sexual Instinct Without Love.

Work Is Of Two Kinds: First, Altering The Position Of Matter At Or Near The Earth's Surface Relative To Other Matter; Second, Telling Other People To Do So.

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

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

The First Man Who Said "fire Burns" Was Employing Scientific Method, At Any Rate If He Had Allowed Himself To Be Burnt Several Times. This Man Had Already Passed Through The Two Stages Of Observation And Generalization. He Had Not, However, What Scientific Technique Demands - A Careful Choice Of Significant Facts On The One Hand, And, On The Other Hand, Various Means Of Arriving At Laws Otherwise Than My Mere Generalization.

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.

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.

Broadly Speaking, Protestants Like To Be Good And Have Invented Theology In Order To Keep Themselves So, Whereas Catholics Like To Be Bad And Have Invented Theology In Order To Keep Their Neighbors Good. Hence, The Social Character Of Catholicism And The Individual Character Of Protestantism.

Science Is At No Moment Quite Right, But It Is Seldom Quite Wrong, And Has, As A Rule, A Better Chance Of Being Right Than The Theories Of The Unscientific. It Is, Therefore, Rational To Accept It Hypothetically.

Trending Author

Cullen Hightower

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Malcolm Mclaren

Category