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There Is A Possibility In Human Minds Of Something Mysterious As The Night-wind, Deep As The Sea, Calm As The Stars, And Strong As Death, A Mystic Contemplation, The “intellectual Love Of God.” Those Who Have Known It Cannot Believe In Wars Any Longer, Or In Any Kind Of Hot Struggle. If I Could Give To Others What Has Come To Me In This Way, I Could Make Them Too Feel The Futility Of Fighting. But I Do Not Know How To Communicate It: When I Speak, They Stare, Applaud, Or Smile, But Do Not Understand.

-Bertrand Russell

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There Is A Possibility

Bertrand Russell

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There Is A Possibility In Human Minds Of Something Mysterious As The Night-wind, Deep As The Sea, Calm As The Stars, And Strong As Death, A Mystic Contemplation, The “intellectual Love Of God.” Those Who Have Known It Cannot Believe In Wars Any Longer, Or In Any Kind Of Hot Struggle. If I Could Give To Others What Has Come To Me In This Way, I Could Make Them Too Feel The Futility Of Fighting. But I Do Not Know How To Communicate It: When I Speak, They Stare, Applaud, Or Smile, But Do Not Understand.

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Nine-tenths Of The Activities Of A Modern Government Are Harmful; Therefore The Worse They Are Performed, The Better.

Hitler Is An Outcome Of Rousseau.

The Immense Majority Of Intellectually Eminent Men Disbelieve In The Christian Religion, But They Conceal The Fact In Public, Because They Are Afraid Of Losing Their Incomes.

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.

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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.

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.

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

The Method Of "postulating" What We Want Has Many Advantages; They Are The Same As The Advantages Of Theft Over Honest Toil.

You Find This Curious Fact, That The More Intense Has Been The Religion Of Any Period And More Profound Has Been The Dogmatic Belief, The Greater Has Been The Cruelty And The Worse Has Been The State Of Affairs. In The So Called Age Of Faith, When Men Really Did Believe The Christian Religion In All Its Completeness, There Was The Inquisition, With Its Tortures; There Were Millions Of Unfortunate Women Burnt As Witches; And There Was Every Kind Of Cruelty Practised Upon All Sorts Of People In The Name Of Religion.

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

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.

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

I Am Paid By The Word, So I Always Write The Shortest Words Possible.

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

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

Doubt And Certainty

Ironclads And Maxim Guns Must Be The Ultimate Arbiters Of Metaphysical Truth.

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

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.

I Believe That The Abolition Of Private Ownership Of Land And Capital Is A Necessary Step Toward Any World In Which The Nations Are To Live At Peace With One Another.

Righteousness Cannot Be Born Until Self-righteousness Is Dead.

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.

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

Drunkeness Is Temporary Suicide: The Happiness That It Brings Is Merely Negative, A Momentary Cessation Of Unhappiness.

There Can't Be A Practical Reason For Believing Something That Is Not True.

The Life Of Man Is A Long March Through The Night, Surrounded By Invisible Foes, Tortured By Weariness And Pain, Towards A Goal That Few Can Hope To Reach, And Where None May Tarry Long.

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.

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

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Most Human Beings, Though In Varying Degrees, Desire To Control, Not Only Their Own Lives But Also The Lives Of Others

Lives Of Others

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The Church No Longer Contends That Knowledge Is In Itself Sinful, Though It Did So In Its Palmy Days; But The Acquisition Of Knowledge, Even Though Not Sinful, Is Dangerous, Since It May Lead To Pride Of Intellect, And Hence To A Questioning Of The Christian Dogma.

There Is An Artist Imprisoned In Each One Of Us. Let Him Loose To Spread Joy Everywhere.

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Finding Yourself

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

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I Found One Day In School A Boy Of Medium Size Ill-treating A Smaller Boy. I Expostulated, But He Replied: "the Bigs Hit Me, So I Hit The Babies; That's Fair." In These Words He Epitomized The History Of The Human Race.

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.

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

One Of The Most Interesting And Harmful Delusions To Which Men And Nations Can Be Subjected Is That Of Imagining Themselves Special Instruments Of The Divine Will.

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

Friendship Love

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

Philosophy Seems To Me On The Whole A Rather Hopeless Business.

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.

Formality Thus The Absence Of All Mention Of Particular Things Or Properties In Logic Or Pure Mathematics Is A Necessary Result Of The Fact That This Study Is, As We Say, "purely Formal".

I Am Not Myself In Any Degree Ashamed Of Having Changed My Opinions.

The People Who Are Regarded As Moral Luminaries Are Those Who Forego Ordinary Pleasures Themselves And Find Compensation In Interfering With The Pleasures Of Others.

The Coward Wretch Whose Hand And Heart Can Bear To Torture Aught Below, Is Ever First To Quail And Start From The Slightest Pain Or Equal Foe.

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

One Must Care About A World One Will Not See.

The Raw Fruits Of The Earth Were Made For Human Sustenance. Even The White Tails Of Rabbits, According To Some Theologians, Have A Purpose, Namely To Make It Easier For Sportsmen To Shoot Them. There Are, It Is True, Some Inconveniences: Lions And Tigers Are Too Fierce, The Summer Is Too Hot, And The Winter Too Cold. But These Things Only Began After Adam Ate The Apple; I Before That, All Animals Were Vegetarians, And The Season Was Always Spring. If Only Adam Had Been Content With Peaches And Nectarines, Grapes And Pears And Pineapples, These Blessings Would Still Be Ours.

That Plato's Republic Should Have Been Admired, On Its Political Side, By Decent People, Is Perhaps The Most Astonishing Example Of Literary Snobbery In All History.

Man Is A Rational Animal – So At Least I Have Been Told. Throughout A Long Life, I Have Looked Diligently For Evidence In Favour Of This Statement, But So Far I Have Not Had The Good Fortune To Come Across It, Though I Have Searched In Many Countries Spread Over Three Continents.

Philosophy, From The Earliest Times, Has Made Greater Claims, And Achieved Fewer Results, Than Any Other Branch Of Learning.

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

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

A Great Many Worries Can Be Diminished By Realizing The Unimportance Of The Matter Which Is Causing Anxiety.

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

Berkeley Retains The Merit Of Having Shown That The Existence Of Matter Is Capable Of Being Denied Without Absurdity.

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

I Do So Hate To Leave This World.

The Fundamental Defect Of Christian Ethics Consists In The Fact That It Labels Certain Classes Of Acts 'sins' And Others 'virtue' On Grounds That Have Nothing To Do With Their Social Consequences.

It Is Not My Prayer And Humility That You Cause Things To Go As You Wish, But By Acquiring A Knowledge Of Natural Laws.

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.

Every Increase In Knowledge Requires An Increase In Wisdom

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

I've Made An Odd Discovery. Every Time I Talk To A Savant I Feel Quite Sure That Happiness Is No Longer A Possibility. Yet When I Talk With My Gardener, I'm Convinced Of The Opposite.

An Individual Human Existence Should Be Like A River

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.

A European Who Goes To New York And Chicago Sees The Future... When He Goes To Asia He Sees The Past.

It Is The Things For Which There Is No Evidence That Are Believed With Passion.

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

My First Advice (on How Not To Grow Old) Would Be To Choose You Ancestors Carefully.

In Adolescence, I Hated Life And Was Continually On The Verge Of Suicide, From Which, However, I Was Restrained By The Desire To Know More Mathematics. Now, On The Contrary, I Enjoy Life; I Might Almost Say That With Every Year That Passes I Enjoy It More.

There Are Some Simple Maxims Which I Think Might Be Commended To Writers Of Expository Prose. First: Never Use A Long Word If A Short Word Will Do. So, If You Want To Make A Statement With A Great Many Qualifications, Put Some Of The Qualifications In Separate Sentences. Third: Do Not Let The Beginning Of Your Sentence Lead The Reader To An Expectation Which Is Contradicted By The End.

It Seems To Me Now That Mathematics Is Capable Of An Artistic Excellence As Great As That Of Any Music, Perhaps Greater; Not Because The Pleasure It Gives (although Very Pure) Is Comparable, Either In Intensity Or In The Number Of People Who Feel It, To That Of Music, But Because It Gives In Absolute Perfection That Combination, Characteristic Of Great Art, Of Godlike Freedom, With The Sense Of Inevitable Destiny; Because, In Fact, It Constructs An Ideal World Where Everything Is Perfect And Yet True.

If You Think Your Belief Is Based Upon Reason, You Will Support It By Argument Rather Than By Persecution, And Will Abandon It If The Argument Goes Against You. But If Your Belief Is Based Upon Faith, You Will Realize That Argument Is Useless, And Will Therefore Resort To Force Either In The Form Of Persecution Or By Stunting Or Distorting The Minds Of The Young In What Is Called 'education.'

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?

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

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

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

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

The Man Who Only Loves Beautiful Things Is Dreaming, Whereas The Man Who Knows Absolute Beauty Is Wide Awake.

If Any Philosopher Had Been Asked For A Definition Of Infinity, He Might Have Produced Some Unintelligible Rigmarole, But He Would Certainly Not Have Been Able To Give A Definition That Had Any Meaning At All.

We Must Be Skeptical Even Of Our Skepticism.

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

When The Journey From Means To End Is Not Too Long, The Means Themselves Are Enjoyed If The End Is Ardently Desired.

It Is Only Through Imagination That Men Become Aware Of What The World Might Be; Without It, ‘progress’ Would Become Mechanical And Trivial.

At All Times, Except When A Monarch Could Enforce His Will, War Has Been Facilitated By The Fact That Vigorous Males, Confident Of Victory, Enjoyed It, While Their Females Admired Them For Their Prowess.

One Eminently Orthodox Catholic Divine Laid It Down That A Confessor May Fondle A Nun's Breasts, Provided He Does It Without Evil Intent.

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

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

What Is Matter? Never Mind.

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

I Do Not Believe That Science Per Se Is An Adequate Source Of Happiness, Nor Do I Think That My Own Scientific Outlook Has Contributed Very Greatly To My Own Happiness, Which I Attribute To Defecating Twice A Day With Unfailing Regularity.

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

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

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

The Secret To Happiness Is To Face The Fact That The World Is Horrible.

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

There Is No Excuse For Deceiving Children. And When, As Must Happen In Conventional Families, They Find That Their Parents Have Lied, They Lose Confidence In Them And Feel Justified In Lying To Them.

From India To Spain, The Brilliant Civilization Of Islam Flourished. What Was Lost To Christendom At This Time Was Not Lost To Civilization, But Quite The Contrary.

Freedom Comes Only To Those Who No Longer Ask Of Life That It Shall Yield Them Any Of Those Personal Goods That Are Subject To The Mutations Of Time.

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. Modern Methods Of Production Have Given Us The Possibility Of Ease And Security For All; We Have Chosen, Instead, To Have Overwork For Some And Starvation For The Others. Hitherto We Have Continued To Be As Energetic As We Were Before There Were Machines; In This We Have Been Foolish, But There Is No Reason To Go On Being Foolish For Ever.

Even In The Most Purely Logical Realms, It Is Insight That First Arrives At What Is New.

If Everything Must Have A Cause, Then God Must Have A Cause. If There Can Be Anything Without A Cause, It May Just As Well Be The World As God, So That There Cannot Be Any Validity In That Argument... The Idea That Things Must Have A Beginning Is Really Due To The Poverty Of Our Imagination.

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.

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.

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

I Must Confess That I Am Deeply Troubled. I Fear That Human Beings Are Intent Upon Acting Out A Vast Deathwish And That It Lies With Us Now To Make Every Effort To Promote Resistance To The Insanity And Brutality Of Policies Which Encompass The Extermination Of Hundreds Of Millions Of Human Beings.

Without Effort And Change, Human Life Cannot Remain Good. It Is Not A Finished Utopia That We Ought To Desire, But A World Where Imagination And Hope Are Alive And Active.

Civilized Life, If It Is To Be Stable, Must Provide A Harmless Outlets For The Impulses Which Our Remote Ancestors Satisfied In Hunting. In Australia, Where People Are Few, And Rabbits Are Many, I Watched The Whole Populace Satisfying The Primitive Impulse In The Primitive Manner By The Skilful Slaughter Of Many Thousands Of Rabbits.

The Point Of Philosophy Is To Start With Something So Simple As Not To Seem Worth Stating, And To End With Something So Paradoxical That No One Will Believe It.

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.

The Essence Of Good Manners Consists In Making It Clear That One Has No Wish To Hurt. When It Is Clearly Necessary To Hurt, It Must Be Done In Such A Way As To Make It Evident That The Necessity Is Felt To Be Regrettable.

The Main Things Which Seem To Me Important On Their Own Account, And Not Merely As Means To Other Things, Are Knowledge, Art, Instinctive Happiness, And Relations Of Friendship Or Affection.

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.

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

Man Can Be Scientifically Manipulated.

A Truer Image Of The World, I Think, Is Obtained By Picturing Things As Entering Into The Stream Of Time From An Eternal World Outside, Than From A View Which Regards Time As The Devouring Tyrant Of All That Is.

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

When Two Men Of Science Disagree, They Do Not Invoke The Secular Arm; They Wait For Further Evidence To Decide The Issue, Because, As Men Of Science, They Know That Neither Is Infallible. But When Two Theologians Differ, Since There Is No Criteria To Which Either Can Appeal, There Is Nothing For It But Mutual Hatred And An Open Or Covert Appeal To Force.

Democracy Is The Process By Which People Choose The Man Who'll Get The Blame.

The World That We Must Seek Is A World In Which The Creative Spirit Is Alive, In Which Life Is An Adventure Full Of Joy And Hope, Based Rather Upon The Impulse To Construct Than Upon The Desire To Retain What We Possess Or To Seize What Is Possessed By Others.

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

Falling In Love

New Relationship

We Have Almost Reached The Point Where Praise Of Rationality Is Held To Mark A Man As An Old Fogey Regrettably Surviving From A Bygone Age.

One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence Is Credulity, And Credulity Could Be Enormously Diminished By Instructions As To The Prevalent Forms Of Mendacity. Credulity Is A Greater Evil In The Present Day Than It Ever Was Before, Because, Owing To The Growth Of Education, It Is Much Easier Than It Used To Be To Spread Misinformation, And, Owing To Democracy, The Spread Of Misinformation Is More Important Than In Former Times To The Holders Of Power.

Fervent Religious Believers Sacrifice Pleasures Of The Body, But Instead Enjoy Pleasures Of The Mind, Including The Joy Of Knowing That Those Men Who Didn't Follow Their Religion Would Be Tortured For Eternity.

No Matter How Eloquently A Dog May Bark, He Cannot Tell You That His Parents Were Poor, But Honest.

The Rules Of Logic Are To Mathematics What Those Of Structure Are To Architecture.

(on A History Of Western Philosophy) I Was Sometimes Accused By Reviewers Of Writing Not A True History But A Biased Account Of The Events That I Arbitrarily Chose To Write Of. But To My Mind, A Man Without A Bias Cannot Write Interesting History - If, Indeed, Such Man Exists.

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.

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

It Seems To Us Unwise To Have Insisted On Teaching Geometry To The Younger Dionysius, Tyrant Of Syracuse, In Order To Make Him A Good King, But From Plato's Point Of View It Was Essential. He Was Sufficiently Pythagorean To Think That Without Mathematics No True Wisdom Is Possible.

All The Labor Of All The Ages, All The Devotion, All The Inspiration, All The Noonday Brightness Of Human Genius Are Destined To Extinction. So Now, My Friends, If That Is True, And It Is True, What Is The Point?

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

The Trouble With The World Is That The Stupid Are Cocksure And The Intelligent Are Full Of Doubt.

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

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

Getting What You Want

When White Men First Effect Contact With Some Unspoilt Race Of Savages, They Offer Them All Kinds Of Benefits, From The Light Of The Gospel To Pumpkin Pie. These, However, Much As We May Regret It, Most Savages Receive With Indifference. What They Really Value Among The Gifts That We Bring To Them Is Intoxicating Liquor Which Enables Them, For The First Time In Their Lives, To Have The Illusion For A Few Brief Moments That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead.

In View Of The Fact That In Any Future World War Nuclear Weapons Will Certainly Be Employed, And That Such Weapons Threaten The Continued Existence Of Mankind, We Urge The Governments Of The World To Realize, And To Acknowledge Publicly, That Their Purpose Cannot Be Furthered By A World War, And We Urge Them, Consequently, To Find Peaceful Means For The Settlement Of All Matters Of Dispute Between Them.

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

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

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

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

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.

Throughout The Long Period Of Religious Doubt, I Had Been Rendered Very Unhappy By The Gradual Loss Of Belief, But When The Process Was Completed, I Found To My Surprise That I Was Quite Glad To Be Done With The Whole Subject.

Against My Will, In The Course Of My Travels, The Belief That Everything Worth Knowing Was Known At Cambridge Gradually Wore Off. In This Respect My Travels Were Very Useful To Me.

Why Repeat The Old Errors, If There Are So Many New Errors To Commit?

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

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.

Animal Rights, Taken To Their Logical Conclusion, Mean Votes For Oysters.

There Will Still Be Things That Machines Cannot Do. They Will Not Produce Great Art Or Great Literature Or Great Philosophy; They Will Not Be Able To Discover The Secret Springs Of Happiness In The Human Heart; They Will Know Nothing Of Love And Friendship.

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

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

There Lies Before Us, If We Choose, Continual Progress In Happiness, Knowledge And Wisdom. Shall We Instead Choose Death, Because We Cannot Forget Our Quarrels? I Appeal As A Human Being To Human Beings; Remember Your Humanity, And Forget The Rest.

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

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.

I Once Saw A Photograph Of A Large Herd Of Wild Elephants In Central Africa Seeing An Airplane For The First Time, And All In A State Of Wild Collective Terror... As, However, There Were No Journalists Among Them, The Terror Died Down When The Airplane Was Out Of Sight.

Americans Need Rest, But Do Not Know It.

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.

Children, After Being Limbs Of Satan In Traditional Theology And Mystically Illuminated Angels In The Minds Of Educational Reformers, Have Reverted To Being Little Devils; Not Theological Demons Inspired By The Evil One, But Scientific Freudian Abominations Inspired By The Unconscious.

Thee Will Find Out In Time That I Have A Great Love Of Professing Vile Sentiments, I Don't Know Why, Unless It Springs From Long Efforts To Avoid Priggery.

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

I Had Supposed Until That Time That It Was Quite Common For Parents To Love Their Children, But The War Persuaded Me That It Is A Rare Exception. I Had Supposed That Most People Liked Money Better Than Almost Anything Else, But I Discovered That They Liked Destruction Even Better. I Had Supposed That Intellectuals Frequently Loved Truth, But I Found Here Again That Not Ten Per Cent Of Them Prefer Truth To Popularity.

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

Man Needs, For His Happiness, Not Only The Enjoyment Of This Or That, But Hope And Enterprise And Change.

Very Many People Spend Money In Ways Quite Different From Those That Their Natural Tastes Would Enjoin, Merely Because The Respect Of Their Neighbors Depends Upon Their Possession Of A Good Car And Their Ability To Give Good Dinners. As A Matter Of Fact, Any Man Who Can Obviously Afford A Car But Genuinely Prefers Travels Or A Good Library Will In The End Be Much More Respected Than If He Behaved Exactly Like Everyone Else.

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

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

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

It Is Likely That America Will Be More Important During The Next Century Or Two, But After That It May Well Be The Turn Of China.

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.

Into Every Tidy Scheme For Arranging The Pattern Of Human Life, It Is Necessary To Inject A Certain Dose Of Anarchism.

The Demand For Certainty Is One Which Is Natural To Man, But Is Nevertheless An Intellectual Vice.

To Understand A Name You Must Be Acquainted With The Particular Of Which It Is A Name.

What Science Cannot Discover, Mankind Cannot Know.

Drunkenness Is Temporary Suicide.

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

Man Is A Rational Animal—so At Least I Have Been Told. … Aristotle, So Far As I Know, Was The First Man To Proclaim Explicitly That Man Is A Rational Animal. His Reason For This View Was … That Some People Can Do Sums. … It Is In Virtue Of The Intellect That Man Is A Rational Animal. The Intellect Is Shown In Various Ways, But Most Emphatically By Mastery Of Arithmetic. The Greek System Of Numerals Was Very Bad, So That The Multiplication Table Was Quite Difficult, And Complicated Calculations Could Only Be Made By Very Clever People.

On The One Hand, Philosophy Is To Keep Us Thinking About Things That We May Come To Know, And On The Other Hand To Keep Us Modestly Aware Of How Much That Seems Like Knowledge Isn't Knowledge

Some People Would Rather Die Than Think.

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

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

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.

I Think We Ought Always To Entertain Our Opinions With Some Measure Of Doubt. I Shouldn't Wish People Dogmatically To Believe Any Philosophy, Not Even Mine.

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

The World In Which We Live Can Be Understood As A Result Of Muddle And Accident; But If It Is The Outcome Of Deliberate Purpose, The Purpose Must Have Been That Of A Fiend. For My Part, I Find Accident A Less Painful And More Plausible Hypothesis.

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

Something Of The Hermit's Temper Is An Essential Element In Many Forms Of Excellence, Since It Enables Men To Resist The Lure Of Popularity, To Pursue Important Work In Spite Of General Indifference Or Hostility, And Arrive At Opinions Which Are Opposed To Prevalent Errors.

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

Procrastination

The Typical Westerner Wishes To Be The Cause Of As Many Changes As Possible In His Environment; The Typical Chinaman Wishes To Enjoy As Much And As Delicately As Possible.

War Grows Out Of Ordinary Human Nature.

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

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.

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

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

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