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When Anaesthetics Were Invented They Were Thought To Be Wicked As Being An Attempt To Thwart God's Will. Insanity Was Thought To Be Due To Diabolic Possession, And It Was Believed That Demons Inhabiting A Madman Could Be Driven Out By Inflicting Pain Upon Him, And So Making Them Uncomfortable. In Pursuit Of This Opinion, Lunatics Were Treated For Years On End With Systematic And Conscientious Brutality.

-Bertrand Russell

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When Anaesthetics Were Invented

Bertrand Russell

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When Anaesthetics Were Invented They Were Thought To Be Wicked As Being An Attempt To Thwart God's Will. Insanity Was Thought To Be Due To Diabolic Possession, And It Was Believed That Demons Inhabiting A Madman Could Be Driven Out By Inflicting Pain Upon Him, And So Making Them Uncomfortable. In Pursuit Of This Opinion, Lunatics Were Treated For Years On End With Systematic And Conscientious Brutality.

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War Doesn't Determine Who's Right, It Determines Who's Left

Against The Vast Majority Of My Countrymen, Even At This Moment, In The Name Of Humanity And Civilization, I Protest Against Our Share In The Destruction Of Germany. A Month Ago Europe Was A Peaceful Comity Of Nations; If An Englishman Killed A German, He Was Hanged. Now, If An Englishman Kills A German, Or If A German Kills An Englishman, He Is A Patriot, Who Has Deserved Well Of His Country.

Those Who Advocate Common Usage In Philosophy Sometimes Speak In A Manner That Suggests The Mystique Of The 'common Man.'

Diet, Injections, And Injunctions Will Combine, From A Very Early Age, To Produce The Sort Of Character And The Sort Of Beliefs That The Authorities Consider Desirable, And Any Serious Criticism Of The Powers That Be Will Become Psychologically Impossible. Even If All Are Miserable, All Will Believe Themselves Happy, Because The Government Will Tell Them That They Are So.

Those Who Have Never Known The Deep Intimacy And The Intense Companionship Of Happy Mutual Love Have Missed The Best Thing That Life Has To Give.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All Knowledge, We Feel, Must Be Built Up Upon Our Instinctive Beliefs; And If These Are Rejected, Nothing Is Left.

Science Does Not Aim At Establishing Immutable Truths And Eternal Dogmas; Its Aim Is To Approach The Truth By Successive Approximations, Without Claiming That At Any Stage Final And Complete Accuracy Has Been Achieved.

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

In Any Closet, You Can Find It, If It Is Too Small, Or Out Of Style, Or There Is Just One Of It Where There Should Be Two

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

Memory Demands An Image.

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.

There Seems Scarcely Any Limit To What Could Be Done In The Way Of Producing A Good World, If Only Men Would Use Science Wisely.

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.

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 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.

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

I Must, Before I Die, Find Some Way To Say The Essential Thing That Is In Me, That I Have Never Said Yet -- A Thing That Is Not Love Or Hate Or Pity Or Scorn, But The Very Breath Of Life, Fierce And Coming From Far Away, Bringing Into Human Life The Vastness And The Fearful Passionless Force Of Non-human Things.

The Man Who Suffers From A Sense Of Sin Is Suffering From A Particular Kind Of Self-love. In All This Vast Universe The Thing That Appears To Him Of Most Importance Is That He Himself Should Be Virtuous. It Is A Grave Defect In Certain Forms Of Traditional Religion That They Have Encouraged This Particular Kind Of Self-absorption.

Love, Children, And Work, Are The Great Sources Of Fertilizing Contact Between The Individual And The Rest Of The World.

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.

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.

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.

In Obedience To The Feeling Of Reality, We Shall Insist That, In The Analysis Of Propositions, Nothing "unreal" Is To Be Admitted. But, After All, If There Is Nothing Unreal, How, It May Be Asked, Could We Admit Anything Unreal? The Reply Is That, In Dealing With Propositions, We Are Dealing In The First Instance With Symbols, And If We Attribute Significance To Groups Of Symbols Which Have No Significance, We Shall Fall Into The Error Of Admitting Unrealities, In The Only Sense In Which This Is Possible, Namely, As Objects Described.

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

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.

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

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.

I Went To Salt Lake City And The Mormons Tried To Convert Me, But When I Found They Forbade Tea And Tobacco I Thought It Was No Religion For Me.

Many Orthodox People Speak As Though It Were The Business Of Sceptics To Disprove Received Dogmas Rather Than Of Dogmatists To Prove Them. This Is, Of Course, A Mistake.

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

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.

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.

We Must Be Sceptical Even Of Our Scepticism.

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

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.

Modern Technique Has Made It Possible For Leisure, Within Limits, To Be Not The Prerogative Of Small Privileged Classes, But A Right Evenly Distributed Throughout The Community. The Morality Of Work Is The Morality Of Slaves, And The Modern World Has No Need Of Slavery.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Could Live Without The Opera Singer, But Not Without The Services Of The Baker. On This Ground You Might Say That The Baker Performs A Greater Service; But No Lover Of Music Would Agree.

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

In The Revolt Against Idealism, The Ambiguities Of The Word Experience Have Been Perceived, With The Result That Realists Have More And More Avoided The Word.

It's Coexistence Or No Existence.

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

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.

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

Idealism And Realism

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

We Ought To Look The World Frankly In The Face.

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.

My Own View On Religion Is That Of Lucretius. I Regard It As A Disease Born Of Fear And As A Source Of Untold Misery To The Human Race.

Civilized People Cannot Fully Satisfy Their Sexual Instinct Without Love.

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.

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

If Throughout Your Life You Abstain From Murder, Theft, Fornication, Perjury, Blasphemy, And Disrespect Toward Your Parents, Church, And Your King, You Are Conventionally Held To Deserve Moral Admiration Even If You Have Never Done A Single Kind, Generous Or Useful Action. This Very Inadequate Notion Of Virtue Is An Outcome Of Taboo Morality, And Has Done Untold Harm.

The Fundamental Defect Of Fathers, In Our Competitive Society, Is That They Want Their Children To Be A Credit To Them.

It Is In Our Hearts That Evil Lies, And It Is From Our Hearts That It Must Be Plucked Out.

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

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

Mathematical Logic

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

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

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.

Heretical Views Arise When The Truth Is Uncertain, And It Is Only When The Truth Is Uncertain That Censorship Is Invoked.

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

Righteous Indignation

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

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

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.

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.

Through The Greatness Of The Universe, Which Philosophy Contemplates, The Mind Also Is Rendered Great, And Becomes Capable Of That Union With The Universe Which Constitutes Its Highest Good.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Anything You're Good At Contributes To Happiness.

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

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

Mathematics Is, I Believe, The Chief Source Of The Belief In Eternal And Exact Truth, As Well As A Sensible Intelligible World.

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

God And Satan Alike Are Essentially Human Figures, The One A Projection Of Ourselves, The Other Of Our Enemies.

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?

Protestants, From The First, Have Been Distinguished From Their Opponents By What They Do Not Believe; To Throw Over One More Dogma Is, Therefore, Merely To Carry The Movement One Stage Further. Moral Fervor Is The Essence Of The Matter.

The Pleasure Of Work Is Open To Anyone Who Can Develop Some Specialised Skill, Provided That He Can Get Satisfaction From The Exercise Of His Skill Without Demanding Universal Applause.

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.

The True Spirit Of Delight...is To Be Found In Mathematics As Surely As In Poetry.

A Priori Logical Propositions Are Such As Can Be Known A Priori Without Study Of The Actual World.

There Is No Logical Impossibility In The Hypothesis That The World Sprang Into Being Five Minutes Ago, Exactly As It Then Was, With A Population That "remembered" A Wholly Unreal Past. There Is No Logically Necessary Connection Between Events At Different Times; Therefore Nothing That Is Happening Now Or Will Happen In The Future Can Disprove The Hypothesis That The World Began Five Minutes Ago.

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

Arithmetic Must Be Discovered In Just The Same Sense In Which Columbus Discovered The West Indies, And We No More Create Numbers Than He Created The Indians.

Reason May Be A Small Force, But It Is Constant, And Works Always In One Direction, While The Forces Of Unreason Destroy One Another In Futile Strife.

We Have In Fact, Two Kinds Of Morality, Side By Side: One Which We Preach, But Do Not Practice, And Another Which We Practice, But Seldom Preach.

Ethics And Morals

The Philosophies That Have Been Inspired By Scientific Technique Are Power Philosophies, And Tend To Regard Everything Non-human As Mere Raw Material. Ends Are No Longer Considered; Only The Skillfulness Of The Process Is Valued. This Also Is A Form Of Madness. It Is, In Our Day, The Most Dangerous Form, And The One Against Which A Sane Philosophy Should Provide An Antidote

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

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.

Remember Your Humanity, And Forget The Rest.

The Teaching Of Christ, As It Appears In The Gospels, Has Had Extraordinarily Little To Do With The Ethics Of Christians.

[man] ... His Origin, His Growth, His Hopes And Fears, His Loves And His Beliefs Are But The Outcome Of Accidental Collocations Of Atoms; That No Fire, No Heroism, No Intensity Of Thought And Feeling Can Preserve An Individual Life Beyond The Grave; That All The Labour Of The Ages, All The Devotion, All The Inspiration, All The Noonday Brightness Of Human Genius Are Destined To Extinction In The Vast Death Of The Solar System, And That The Whole Temple Of Man's Achievement Must Inevitably Be Buried Beneath The Debris Of A Universe In Ruins.

Prison Is A Severe And Terrible Punishment; But For Me, Thanks To Arthur Balfour, This Was Not So. I Was Much Cheered On My Arrival By The Warder At The Gate, Who Had To Take Particulars About Me. He Asked My Religion, And I Replied 'agnostic.' He Asked How To Spell It, And Remarked With A Sigh: 'well, There Are Many Religions, But I Suppose They All Worship The Same God.' This Remark Kept Me Cheerful For About A Week.

All Who Are Not Lunatics Are Agreed About Certain Things. That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead, Better To Be Adequately Fed Than Starved, Better To Be Free Than A Slave. Many People Desire Those Things Only For Themselves And Their Friends; They Are Quite Content That Their Enemies Should Suffer. These People Can Only Be Refuted By Science: Humankind Has Become So Much One Family That We Cannot Ensure Our Own Prosperity Except By Ensuring That Of Everyone Else. If You Wish To Be Happy Yourself, You Must Resign Yourself To Seeing Others Also Happy.

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.

Dr. Arnold . . . The Admired Reformer Of Public Schools, Came Across Some Cranks Who Thought It A Mistake To Flog Boys. Anyone Reading His Outburst Of Furious Indignation Against This Opinion Will Be Forced To The Conclusion That He Enjoyed Inflicting Floggings.

A Man Who Has Once Perceived, However Temporarily And However Briefly, What Makes Greatness Of Soul, Can No Longer Be Happy If He Allows Himself To Be Petty, Self-seeking, Troubled By Trivial Misfortunes, Dreading What Fate May Have In Store For Him. The Man Capable Of Greatness Of Soul Will Open Wide The Windows Of His Mind, Letting The Winds Blow Freely Upon It From Every Portion Of The Universe.

As For Earthquakes, Though They Were Still Formidable, They Were So Interesting That Men Of Science Could Hardly Regret Them.

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.

What The World Needs Is Not Dogma But An Attitude Of Scientific Inquiry.

Great God In Boots! – The Ontological Argument Is Sound!

Man Is The Product Of Causes Which Had No Prevision Of The End They Were Achieving; His Origin, His Growth, His Hopes And Fears, His Loves And Beliefs, Are But The Outcome Of Accidental Collocations Of Atoms; No Fire, No Heroism, No Intensity Of Though And Feeling, Can Preserve An Individual Life Beyond The Grave.

No One Ever Gossips About The Virtues Of Others

When A Man Acts In Ways That Annoy Us We Wish To Think Him Wicked, And We Refuse To Face The Fact That His Annoying Behavior Is The Result Of Antecedent Causes Which, If You Follow Them Long Enough, Will Take You Beyond The Moment Of His Birth, And Therefore To Events For Which He Cannot Be Held Responsible By Any Stretch Of Imagination... When A Motorcar Fails To Start, We Do Not Attribute Its Annoying Behavior To Sin, We Do Not Say, You Are A Wicked Motorcar, And You Shall Not Have Any More Gasoline Until You Go.

The Time Has Come, Or Is About To Come, When Only Large-scale Civil Disobedience, Which Should Be Nonviolent, Can Save The Populations From The Universal Death Which Their Governments Are Preparing For Them.

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

Lives Of Others

The Root Of The Matter Is A Very Simple And Old Fashioned Thing... Love Or Compassion. If You Feel This, You Have A Motive For Existence, A Guide For Action, A Reason For Courage, An Imperative Necessity For Intellectual Honesty.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Nothing Of Importance Is Ever Achieved Without Discipline. I Feel Myself Sometimes Not Wholly In Sympathy With Some Modern Educational Theorists, Because I Think That They Underestimate The Part That Discipline Plays. But The Discipline You Have In Your Life Should Be One Determined By Your Own Desires And Your Own Needs, Not Put Upon You By Society Or Authority.

Meantime, The World In Which We Exist Has Other Aims. But It Will Pass Away, Burnt Up In The Fire Of Its Own Hot Passions; And From Its Ashes Will Spring A New And Younger World, Full Of Fresh Hope, Woth The Light Of Morning In Its Eyes.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The Man Who Is Unhappy Will, As A Rule, Adopt An Unhappy Creed, While The Man Who Is Happy Will Adopt A Happy Creed; Each May Attribute His Happiness Or Unhappiness To His Beliefs, While The Real Causation Is The Other Way Round.

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.

War Grows Out Of Ordinary Human Nature.

War...seems A Mere Madness, A Collective Insanity.

We Need A Science To Save Us From Science.

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.

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

We Must Be Skeptical Even Of Our Skepticism.

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

Doubt And Certainty

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.

The Degree Of One's Emotions Varies Inversely With One's Knowledge Of The Facts - The Less You Know The Hotter You Get.

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

The True Function Of Logic ... As Applied To Matters Of Experience ... Is Analytic Rather Than Constructive; Taken A Priori, It Shows The Possibility Of Hitherto Unsuspected Alternatives More Often Than The Impossibility Of Alternatives Which Seemed Prima Facie Possible. Thus, While It Liberates Imagination As To What The World May Be, It Refuses To Legislate As To What The World Is

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

Do Not Feel Certain Of Anything.

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

Fools And Fanatics Are Always So Certain Of Themselves.

Thought Provoking

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Change Is Scientific; Progress Is Ethical; Change Is Indubitable, Whereas Progress Is A Matter Of Controversy.

Boys And Girls Should Be Taught Respect For Each Other's Liberty... And That Jealousy And Possessiveness Kill Love.

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

I Have Been Merely Oppressed By The Weariness And Tedium And Vanity Of Things Lately: Nothing Stirs Me, Nothing Seems Worth Doing Or Worth Having Done: The Only Thing That I Strongly Feel Worth While Would Be To Murder As Many People As Possible So As To Diminish The Amount Of Consciousness In The World. These Times Have To Be Lived Through: There Is Nothing To Be Done With Them.

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.

Religion Is Based ... Mainly Upon Fear ... Fear Of The Mysterious, Fear Of Defeat, Fear Of Death. Fear Is The Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Have Gone Hand In Hand. My Own View On Religion Is That Of Lucretius. I Regard It As A Disease Born Of Fear And As A Source Of Untold Misery To The Human Race.

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.

Our Individual Life Is Brief, And Perhaps The Whole Life Of Mankind Will Be Brief If Measured In Astronomical Scale

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

Worry Is A Form Of Fear, And All Forms Of Fear Produce Fatigue. A Man Who Has Learned Not To Feel Fear Will Find The Fatigue Of Daily Life Enormously Diminished.

The Key To Happiness Is Accepting One Unpleasant Reality Every Day.

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.

One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence Is Credulity, And Credulity Could Be Enormously Diminished By Instructions As To The Prevalent Forms Of Mendacity.

Drunkenness Is Temporary Suicide.

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

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

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.

The Most Valuable Things In Life Are Not Measured In Monetary Terms. The Really Important Things Are Not Houses And Lands, Stocks And Bonds, Automobiles And Real State, But Friendships, Trust, Confidence, Empathy, Mercy, Love And Faith.

Aristotle's Metaphysics, Roughly Speaking, May Be Described As Plato Diluted By Common Sense. He Is Difficult Because Plato And Common Sense Do Not Mix Easily.

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

Are You Never Afraid Of God's Judgement In Denying Him? Most Certainly Not. I Also Deny Zeus And Jupiter And Odin And Brahma, But This Causes Me No Qualms. I Observe That A Very Large Portion Of The Human Race Does Not Believe In God And Suffers No Visible Punishment In Consequence. And If There Were A God, I Think It Very Unlikely That He Would Have Such An Uneasy Vanity As To Be Offended By Those Who Doubt His Existence.

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.

It Appeared That After First Contemplating A Book On Some Subject, And After Giving Serious Preliminary Attention To It, I Needed A Period Of Subconscious Incubation Which Could Not Be Hurried And Was If Anything Impeded By Deliberate Thinking.... Having, By A Time Of Very Intense Concentration, Planted The Problem In My Subconsciousness, It Would Germinate Underground Until, Suddenly, The Solution Emerged With A Blinding Clarity, So That It Only Remained To Write Down What Happened As If In A Revelation.

For Over Two Thousand Years It Has Been The Custom Among Earnest Moralists To Decry Happiness As Something Degraded And Unworthy

Since Adam And Eve Ate The Apple, Man Has Never Refrained From Any Folly Of Which He Was Capable.

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.

Fear Is The Parent Of Cruelty, And Therefore It Is No Wonder If Cruelty And Religion Go Hand In Hand.

If A Philosophy Is To Bring Happiness It Should Be Inspired By Kindly Feelings. Marx Pretended That He Wanted The Happiness Of The Proletariat; What He Really Wanted Was The Unhappiness Of The Bourgeois.

While Economics Is About How People Make Choice, Sociology Is About How They Don't Have Any Choice To Make.

All Who Are Not Lunatics Are Agreed About Certain Things : That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead, Better To Be Adequately Fed Than Starved, Better To Be Free Than A Slave

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

There Is No Need To Worry About Mere Size. We Do Not Necessarily Respect A Fat Man More Than A Thin Man. Sir Isaac Newton Was Very Much Smaller Than A Hippopotamus, But We Do Not On That Account Value Him Less.

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

Philosophy Is To Be Studied, Not For The Sake Of Any Definite Answers To Its Questions, Since No Definite Answers Can, As A Rule, Be Known To Be True, But Rather For The Sake Of The Questions Themselves; Because These Questions Enlarge Our Conception Of What Is Possible, Enrich Our Intellectual Imagination And Diminish The Dogmatic Assurance Which Closes The Mind Against Speculation; But Above All Because, Through The Greatness Of The Universe Which Philosophy Contemplates, The Mind Is Also Rendered Great, And Becomes Capable Of That Union With The Universe Which Constitutes Its Highest Good.

All Religions Are Both Harmful And Untrue.

Philosophy Is An Unusually Ingenious Attempt To Think Fallaciously.

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.

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