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William James Describes A Man Who Got The Experience From Laughing-gas; Whenever He Was Under Its Influence, He Knew The Secret Of The Universe, But When He Came To, He Had Forgotten It. At Last, With Immense Effort, He Wrote Down The Secret Before The Vision Had Faded. When Completely Recovered, He Rushed To See What He Had Written. It Was 'a Smell Of Petroleum Prevails Throughout'.

-Bertrand Russell

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William James Describes A

Bertrand Russell

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William James Describes A Man Who Got The Experience From Laughing-gas; Whenever He Was Under Its Influence, He Knew The Secret Of The Universe, But When He Came To, He Had Forgotten It. At Last, With Immense Effort, He Wrote Down The Secret Before The Vision Had Faded. When Completely Recovered, He Rushed To See What He Had Written. It Was 'a Smell Of Petroleum Prevails Throughout'.

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That The World Is In A Bad Shape Is Undeniable, But There Is Not The Faintest Reason In History To Suppose That Christianity Offers A Way Out.

Everything Is Vague To A Degree You Do Not Realize Till You Have Tried To Make It Precise.

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.

It Is Preoccupation With Possessions, More Than Anything Else, That Prevents Us From Living Freely And Nobly.

A Religious Creed Differs From A Scientific Theory In Claiming To Embody Eternal And Absolutely Certain Truth, Whereas Science Is Always Tentative, Expecting That Modification In Its Present Theories Will Sooner Or Later Be Found Necessary, And Aware That Its Method Is One Which Is Logically Incapable Of Arriving At A Complete And Final Demonstration.

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.

Mysticism Is, In Essence, Little More Than A Certain Intensity And Depth Of Feeling In Regard To What Is Believed About The Universe.

Every Living Thing Is A Sort Of Imperialist, Seeking To Transform As Much As Possible Of Its Environment Into Itself.

It Is Entirely Clear That There Is Only One Way In Which Great Wars Can Be Permanently Prevented, And That Is The Establishment Of An International Government With A Monopoly Of Serious Armed Force.

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.

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

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.

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

Inferences Of Science And Common Sense Differ From Those Of Deductive Logic And Mathematics In A Very Important Respect, Namely, When The Premises Are True And The Reasoning Correct, The Conclusion Is Only Probable.

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

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.

One Of The Most Painful Circumstances Of Recent Advances In Science Is That Each One Makes Us Know Less Than We Thought We Did

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

I Do Not Think Any Reasonable Person Can Doubt That In India, China And Japan, If The Knowledge Of Birth Control Existed, The Birthrate Would Fall Very Rapidly

Philosophy Bakes No Bread

Much Of The Most Important Evils That Mankind Have To Consider Are Those Which They Inflict Upon Each Other Through Stupidity Or Malevolence Or Both.

The Most Essential Characteristic Of Scientific Technique Is That It Proceeds From Experiment, Not From Tradition.

Although This May Seem A Paradox, All Exact Science Is Dominated By The Idea Of Approximation. When A Man Tells You That He Knows The Exact Truth About Anything, You Are Safe In Inferring That He Is An Inexact Man. Every Careful Measurement In Science Is Always Given With The Probable Error ... Every Observer Admits That He Is Likely Wrong, And Knows About How Much Wrong He Is Likely To Be.

Next To Worry Probably One Of The Most Potent Causes Of Unhappiness Is Envy.

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

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

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

Patience And Boredom Are Closely Related. Boredom, A Certain Kind Of Boredom, Is Really Impatience. You Don't Like The Way Things Are, They Aren't Interesting Enough For You, So You Deccide- And Boredom Is A Decision-that You Are Bored.

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.

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

Folly Is Perennial And Yet The Human Race Has Survived.

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.

Anything You're Good At Contributes To Happiness.

It Is Possible That Mankind Is On The Threshold Of A Golden Age; But, If So, It Will Be Necessary First To Slay The Dragon That Guards The Door, And This Dragon Is Religion.

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

Men Who Are Unhappy, Like Men Who Sleep Badly, Are Always Proud Of The Fact.

The Teacher, Like The Artist, The Philosopher, And The Man Of Letters, Can Only Perform His Work Adequately If He Feels Himself To Be An Individual Directed By An Inner Creative Impulse, Not Dominated And Fettered By An Outside Authority.

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

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.

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

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

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

Idealism And Realism

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

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

Americans Need Rest, But Do Not Know It.

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.

Conquer The World By Intelligence, And Not Merely By Being Slavishly Subdued By The Terror That Comes From It.

Conquer The World

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

If The Church Is Not Now As Bad As The Soviet Government, That Is Due To The Influence Of Those Who Attacked The Church

I Hold All Knowledge That Is Concerned With Things That Actually Exist - All That Is Commonly Called Science - To Be Of Very Slight Value Compared To The Knowledge Which, Like Philosophy And Mathematics, Is Concerned With Ideal And Eternal Objects, And Is Freed From This Miserable World Which God Has Made.

When I Was 4 Years Old ... I Dreamt That I'd Been Eaten By A Wolf, And To My Great Surprise I Was In The Wolf's Stomach And Not In Heaven.

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

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

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.

Altogether It Will Be Found That A Quiet Life Is Characteristic Of Great Men, And That Their Pleasures Have Not Been Of The Sort That Would Look Exciting To The Outward Eye.

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.

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

I Do Not Think That The Real Reason Why People Accept Religion Has Anything To Do With Argumentation. They Accept Religion On Emotional Grounds.

I Often Long To . . . Give Up My Life To Love Of My Neighbour. This Is Really A Temptation.

Indemnity For The Past And Security For The Future.

Never Let Yourself Be Diverted, Either By What You Wish To Believe, Or What You Think Could Have Beneficent Social Effects If It Were Believed; But Look Only And Solely At What Are The Facts.

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.

Skilled Work, Of No Matter What Kind, Is Only Done Well By Those Who Take A Certain Pleasure In It, Quite Apart From Its Utility, Either To Themselves In Earning A Living, Or To The World Through Its Outcome.

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

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

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

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

It [is] Possible To Suppose That, If Russia Is Allowed To Have Peace, An Amazing Industrial Development May Take Place, Making Russia A Rival Of The United States.

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

I Do Wish I Believed In The Life Eternal, For It Makes Me Quite Miserable To Think Man Is Merely A Kind Of Machine Endowed, Unhappily For Himself, With Consciousness.

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

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

...i Am Afraid That Education Is Conceived More In Terms Of Indoctrination By Most School Officials Than In Terms Of Enlightenment. My Own Belief Is That Education Must Be Subversive If It Is To Be Meaningful. By This I Mean That It Must Challenge All The Things We Take For Granted, Examine All Accepted Assumptions, Tamper With Every Sacred Cow, And Instill A Desire To Question And Doubt. Without This The Mere Instruction To Memorise Data Is Empty. The Attempt To Enforce Conventional Mediocrity On The Young Is Criminal.

Religion May In Most Of Its Forms Be Defined As The Belief That The Gods Are On The Side Of The Government.

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

World Government

One Of The Main Causes Of Trouble In The World Is Dogmatic And Fanatical Belief In Some Doctrine For Which There Is No Adequate Evidence

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

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.

A Fanatical Belief In Democracy Makes Democratic Institutions Impossible.

Do Not Feel Certain Of Anything.

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

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

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.

The True Spirit Of Delight, The Exaltation, The Sense Of Being More Than Man, Which Is The Touchstone Of The Highest Excellence, Is To Be Found In Mathematics As Surely As Poetry.

To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

Whenever You Find Yourself Getting Angry About A Difference Of Opinion, Be On Your Guard; You Will Probably Find, On Examination, That Your Belief Is Going Beyond What The Evidence Warrants.

Finding Yourself

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.

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.

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.

The First Step In A Fascist Movement Is The Combination Under An Energetic Leader Of A Number Of Men Who Possess More Than The Average Share Of Leisure, Brutality, And Stupidity. The Next Step Is To Fascinate Fools And Muzzle The Intelligent, By Emotional Excitement On The One Hand And Terrorism On The Other.

When We Look At A Rock What We Are Seeing Is Not The Rock, But The Effect Of The Rock Upon Us.

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

To The Young I Should Offer Two Maxims: Don't Accept Superficial Solutions Of Difficult Problems. It Is Better To Do A Little Good Than Much Harm. I Should Not Offer Anything More Specific; Every Young Person Should Decide On His Or Her Own Credo.

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 Pure Mathematician, Like The Musician, Is A Free Creator Of His World Of Ordered Beauty.

The More Intense Has Been The Religion Of Any Period And The More Profound Has Been The Dogmatic Belief, The Greater Has Been The Cruelty And The Worse Has Been The State Of Affairs.

Logic Must No More Admit A Unicorn Than Zoology Can.

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

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

I Did Not, However, Commit Suicide, Because I Wished To Know More Of Mathematics.

3 Is Prime, 5 Is Prime, 7 Is Prime, 9 Is A Paradox; As Is A Paradox Why The Number 1 Is Not Prime If It Has No Other Divisors Besides Himself.

How Much Longer Is The World Willing To Endure This Spectacle Of Wanton Cruelty?

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

No Man Is Liberated From Fear Who Dare Not See His Place In The World As It Is; No Man Can Achieve The Greatness Of Which He Is Capable Until He Has Allowed Himself To See His Own Littleness.

Fools And Fanatics Are Always So Certain Of Themselves.

Thought Provoking

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. But Among Ends That Can Be Achieved Our Choice Must Be Decided By Other Than Purely Scientific Considerations. If A Man Were To Say, "i Hate The Human Race, And I Think It Would Be A Good Thing If It Were Exterminated," We Could Say, "well, My Dear Sir, Let Us Begin The Process With You." But This Is Hardly Argument, And No Amount Of Science Could Prove Such A Man Mistaken.

Every Sane And Sensible And Quiet Thing We Do Is Absolutely Ignored By The Press.

Protagoras Did Not Know If The Gods Exist, But He Held In Any Case They Ought To Be Worshiped. Philosophy, According To Him, Had Nothing Edifying To Teach, And For The Survival Of Morals We Must Rely Upon The Thoughtlessness Of The Majority And Their Willingness To Believe What They Had Been Taught.

Even If It Is Indifferent To Human Desires, As It Seems To Be; If Human Life Is A Passing Episode, Hardly Noticeable In The Vastness Of Cosmic Processes; If There Is No Superhuman Purpose, And No Hope Of Ultimate Salvation, It Is Better To Know And Acknowledge This Truth Than To Endeavor, In Futile Self-assertion, To Order The Universe To Be What We Find Comfortable.

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

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do. [...] The Most Savage Controversies Are Those About Matters As To Which There Is No Good Evidence Either Way. Persecution Is Used In Theology, Not In Arithmetic, Because In Arithmetic There Is Knowledge, But In Theology There Is Only Opinion. So Whenever You Find Yourself Getting Angry About A Difference Of Opinion, Be On Your Guard; You Will Probably Find, On Examination, That Your Belief Is Going Beyond What The Evidence Warrants.

Finding Yourself

Most Of The Greatest Evils That Man Has Inflicted Upon Man Have Come Through People Feeling Quite Certain About Something Which, In Fact, Was False.

Dogma Demands Authority, Rather Than Intelligent Thought, As The Source Of Opinion; It Requires Persecution Of Heretics And Hostility To Unbelievers; It Asks Of Its Disciples That They Should Inhibit Natural Kindliness In Favor Of Systematic Hatred.

Some Care Is Needed In Using Descartes' Argument. "i Think, Therefore I Am" Says Rather More Than Is Strictly Certain. It Might Seem As Though We Are Quite Sure Of Being The Same Person To-day As We Were Yesterday, And This Is No Doubt True In Some Sense. But The Real Self Is As Hard To Arrive At As The Real Table, And Does Not Seem To Have That Absolute, Convincing Certainty That Belongs To Particular Experiences.

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

Extreme Hopes Are Born Of Extreme Misery, And In Such A World Hopes Could Only Be Irrational.

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

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

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.

As Soon As We Abandon Our Own Reason, And Are Content To Rely Upon Authority, There Is No End To Our Trouble. . . . No Catholic, For Instance, Takes Seriously The Text Which Says That A Bishop Should Be The Husband Of One Wife.

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

The Use Of Self Control Is Like The Use Of Brakes On Train. It Is Useful When You Find Yourself In Wrong Direction But Merely Harmful When The Direction Is Right

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.

While The Dogmatist Is Harmful, The Sceptic Is Useless ...; One Is Certain Of Knowing, The Other Of Not Knowing. What Philosophy Should Dissipate Is Certainty, Whether Of Knowledge Or Of Ignorance. Knowledge Is Not So Precise A Concept As Is Commonly Thought. Instead Of Saying 'i Know This', We Ought To Say 'i More Or Less Know Something More Or Less Like This'. ... Knowledge In Practical Affairs Has Not The Certainty Or The Precision Of Arithmetic.

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.

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.

Christianity Offers Reasons For Not Fearing Death Or The Universe, And In So Doing It Fails To Teach Adequately The Virtue Of Courage.

Truth Is For The Gods; From Our Human Point Of View, It Is An Ideal, Towards Which We Can Approximate, But Which We Cannot Hope To Reach.

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.

Almost All Education Has A Political Motive: It Aims At Strengthening Some Group, National Or Religious Or Even Social, In The Competition With Other Groups. It Is This Motive, In The Main, Which Determines The Subjects Taught, The Knowledge Offered And The Knowledge Withheld, And Also Decides What Mental Habits The Pupils Are Expected To Acquire. Hardly Anything Is Done To Foster The Inward Growth Of Mind And Spirit; In Fact, Those Who Have Had The Most Education Are Very Often Atrophied In Their Mental And Spiritual Life.

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

The Axiom Of Choice Is Necessary To Select A Set From An Infinite Number Of Socks, But Not An Infinite Number Of Shoes.

You Could Take Up The Line That Some Of The Gnostics Took Up - A Line Which I Often Thought Was A Very Plausible One - That As A Matter Of Fact This World That We Know Was Made By The Devil At A Moment When God Was Not Looking. There Is A Good Deal To Be Said For That, And I Am Not Concerned To Refute It.

The Commonest Objection To Birth Control Is That It Is Against Nature.

Men Have Physical Needs, And They Have Emotions. While Physical Needs Are Unsatisfied, They Take First Place; But When They Are Satisfied, Emotions Unconnected With Them Become Important In Deciding Whether A Man Is To Be Happy Or Unhappy.

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

Mystery Is Delightful, But Unscientific, Since It Depends Upon Ignorance.

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

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.

We May Say, In A Broad Way, That Greek Philosophy Down To Aristotle Expresses The Mentality Appropriate To The City State; That Stoicism Is Appropriate To A Cosmopolitan Despotism; That Stochastic Philosophy Is An Intellectual Expression Of The Church As An Organization; That Philosophy Since Descartes, Or At Any Rate Since Locke, Tends To Embody The Prejudices Of The Commercial Middle Class; And That Marxism And Fascism Are The Philosophies Appropriate To The Modern Industrial State.

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.

Experience Has Taught Me A Technique For Dealing With Such People [...] I Counter The Devotees Of The Great Pyramid By Adoration Of The Sphinx; And The Devotee Of Nuts By Pointing Out That Hazelnuts And Walnuts Are As Deleterious As Other Foods And Only Brazil Nuts Should Be Tolerated. But When I Was Younger I Had Not Yet Acquired This Technique, With The Result That My Contacts With Cranks Were Sometimes Alarming.

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

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

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little.

Bolshevism Is To Be Reckoned With Mohammedanism Rather Than With Christianity And Buddhism. Christianity And Buddhism Are Primarily Personal Religions, With Mystical Doctrines And A Love Of Contemplation. Mohammedanism And Bolshevism Are Practical, Social, Unspiritual, Concerned To Win The Empire Of The World.

It Will Be Found, As Men Grow More Tolerant In Their Instincts, That Many Uniformities Now Insisted Upon Are Useless And Even Harmful.

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.

The Newspapers At One Time Said That I Was Dead But After Carefully Examining The Evidence I Came To The Conclusion That This Statement Was False.

Patriotism Is The Willingness To Kill And Be Killed For Trivial Reasons.

The Average Man's Opinions Are Much Less Foolish Than They Would Be If He Thought For Himself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If We Compare Europe With Other Continents, It Is Marked Out As [another] Persecuting Continent.

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

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.

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

It Is For This Reason That Rationality Is Of Supreme Importance To The Well-being Of The Human Species...even More, In Those Less Fortunate Times In Which It Is Despised And Rejected As The Vain Dream Of Men Who Lack The Virility To Kill Where They Cannot Agree.

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.

Find More Pleasure In Intelligent Dissent Than In Passive Agreement, For, If You Value Intelligence As You Should, The Former Implies A Deeper Agreement Than The Latter.

It Seems To Me A Fundamental Dishonesty, And A Fundamental Treachery To Intellectual Integrity To Hold A Belief Because You Think It's Useful And Not Because You Think It's True.

...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.

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

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.

(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.

Affection Cannot Be Created; It Can Only Be Liberated.

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

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

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.

Unless You Assume A God, The Question Of Life's Purpose Is Meaningless.

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

Christ . . . Said That A Man Who Had Looked After A Woman Lustfully Had Sinned As Much As The Man Who Had Seduced Her. How Absurd!

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.

Every Increase In Knowledge Requires An Increase In Wisdom

We Are Condemned To Kill Time, Thus We Die Bit By Bit. - Octavio Paz The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

It Is Undesirable To Believe A Proposition When There Is No Ground Whatever For Supposing It True

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

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

All Movements Go Too Far.

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.

I Was Told That The Chinese Said They Would Bury Me By The Western Lake And Build A Shrine To My Memory. I Have Some Slight Regret That This Did Not Happen, As I Might Have Become A God, Which Would Have Been Very Chic For An Atheist.

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

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.

Politics Is Largely Governed By Sententious Platitudes Which Are Devoid Of Truth

A Good Man Will Never Suspect His Friends Of Shady Actions: This Is Part Of His Goodness. A Good Man Will Never Be Suspected By The Public Of Using His Goodness To Screen Villains: This Is Part Of His Utility

All Definite Knowledge - So I Should Contend - Belongs To Science; All Dogma As To What Surpasses Definite Knowledge Belongs To Theology. But Between Theology And Science There Is A No Man's Land, Exposed To Attack By Both Sides; This No Man's Land Is Philosophy.

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.

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

More Cranks Take Up Unfashionable Errors Than Unfashionable Truths.

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

One Of The Commonest Things To Do With Savings Is To Lend Them To Some Government. In View Of The Fact That The Bulk Of The Public Expenditure Of Most Civilized Governments Consists In Payment For Past Wars Or Preparation For Future Wars, The Man Who Lends His Money To A Government Is In The Same Position As The Bad Men In Shakespeare Who Hire Murderers. The Net Result Of The Man's Economical Habits Is To Increase The Armed Forces Of The State To Which He Lends His Savings. Obviously It Would Be Better If He Spent The Money, Even If He Spent It In Drink Or Gambling.

What We Cannot Think We Cannot Think, Therefore We Also Cannot Say What We Cannot Think.

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.

Life Seems To Me Essentially Passion, Conflict, Rage. It Is Only Intellect That Keeps Me Sane; Perhaps This Makes Me Overvalue Intellect Against Feeling.

It Is Only In Marriage With The World That Our Ideals Can Bear Fruit; Divorced From It, They Remain Barren.

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.

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

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

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