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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.

-Bertrand Russell

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You Find As You

Bertrand Russell

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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.

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It Is Because Modern Education Is So Seldom Inspired By A Great Hope That It So Seldom Achieves Great Results. The Wish To Preserve The Past Rather That The Hope Of Creatingfuture Dominates The Minds Of Those Who Control The Teaching Of The Young.

These Illustrations Suggest Four General Maxims[...]. The First Is: Remember That Your Motives Are Not Always As Altruistic As They Seem To Yourself. The Second Is: Don't Over-estimate Your Own Merits. The Third Is: Don't Expect Others To Take As Much Interest In You As You Do Yourself. And The Fourth Is: Don't Imagine That Most People Give Enough Thought To You To Have Any Special Desire To Persecute You.

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

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.

There Is An Element Of The Busybody In Our Conception Of Virtue: Unless A Man Makes Himself A Nuisance To A Great Many People, We Do Not Think He Can Be An Exceptionally Good Man.

I Have Found, For Example, That If I Have To Write Upon Sum Rather Difficult Topic, The Best Plan Is To Think About It With Very Great Intensity-the Greatest Intensity Of Which I Am Capable-for A Few Hours Or Days, And At The End Of That Time Give Orders, So To Speak (to My Subconscious Mind) That The Work Is To Proceed Underground. After Some Months I Return Consciously To The Topic And Find That The Work Has Been Done.

You Must Believe That You Can Help Bring About A Better World.

What Is Wanted Is Not The Will To Believe, But The Will To Find Out, Which Is The Exact Opposite.

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

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

Mathematical Logic

Orthodoxy Is The Death Of Intelligence.

Cruelty Is, In Theory, A Perfectly Adequate Ground For Divorce, But It May Be Interpreted So As To Become Absurd.

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.

Among Human Beings, The Subjection Of Women Is Much More Complete At A Certain Level Of Civilization Than It Is Among Savages. And The Subjection Is Always Reinforced By Morality.

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.

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.

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!

America Remained A Land Of Promise For Lovers Of Freedom. Even Byron, At A Moment When He Was Disgusted With Napoleon For Not Committing Suicide, Wrote An Eloquent Stanza In Praise Of Washington.

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

Procrastination

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.

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

I Have Sought Love, First, Because It Brings Ecstasy – Ecstasy So Great That I Would Often Have Sacrificed All The Rest Of Life For A Few Hours Of That Joy. ... I Have Sought It, Finally, Because In The Union Of Love I Have Seen, In A Mystic Miniature, The Prefiguring Vision Of The Heaven That Saints And Poets Have Imagined.

Almost Everything That Distinguishes The Modern World From Earlier Centuries Is Attributable To Science, Which Achieved Its Most Spectacular Triumphs In The Seventeenth Century.

Folly Is Perennial And Yet The Human Race Has Survived.

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.

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.

Punctuality Is A Quality The Need Of Which Is Bound Up With Social Co-operation.

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

In Human Relations One Should Penetrate To The Core Of Loneliness In Each Person And Speak To That.

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.

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

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

The Whiter My Hair Becomes, The More Ready People Are To Believe What I Say.

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

To A Modern Mind, It Is Difficult To Feel Enthusiastic About A Virtuous Life If Nothing Is Going To Be Achieved By It.

[the Church] Is In Its Major Part An Opponent Still Of Progress And Improvement In All The Ways That Diminish Suffering In The World, Because It Has Chosen To Label As Morality A Certain Narrow Set Of Rules Of Conduct Which Have Nothing To Do With Human Happiness; And When You Say That This Or That Ought To Be Done Because It Would Make For Human Happiness, They Think That Has Nothing To Do With The Matter At All. "what Has Human Happiness To Do With Morals? The Object Of Morals Is Not To Make People Happy.

I Like Mathematics Because It Is Not Human And Has Nothing Particular To Do With This Planet Or With The Whole Accidental Universe - Because, Like Spinoza's God, It Won't Love Us In Return.

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

We Know Too Much And Feel Too Little.

Politics Is Concerned With Herds Rather Than With Individuals, And The Passions Which Are Important In Politics Are, Therefore, Those In Which The Various Members Of A Given Herd Can Feel Alike.

We Know That The Exercise Of Virtue Should Be Its Own Reward, And It Seems To Follow That The Enduring Of It On The Part Of The Patient Should Be Its Own Punishment.

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.

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

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

In America Everybody Is Of The Opinion That He Has No Social Superiors, Since All Men Are Equal, But He Does Not Admit That He Has No Social Inferiors, For, From The Time Of Jefferson Onward, The Doctrine That All Men Are Equal Applies Only Upwards, Not Downwards.

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.

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.

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

The Discipline In Your Life Should Be One Determined By Your Own Desires And Your Own Needs, Not Put Upon You By Society Or Authority.

Happiness, As Is Evident, Depends Partly Upon External Circumstances And Partly Upon Oneself.

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.

Mathematics, Rightly Viewed, Possesses Not Only Truth, But Supreme Beauty A Beauty Cold And Austere, Like That Of Sculpture, Without Appeal To Any Part Of Our Weaker Nature, Without The Georgeous Trappings Of Painting Or Music, Yet Sublimely Pure, And Capable Of A Stern Perfection Such As Only The Greatest Art Can Show. 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 In Poetry.

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.

To Be Out Of Harmony With One's Surroundings Is Of Course A Misfortune, But It Is Not Always A Misfortune To Be Avoided At All Costs. Where The Environment Is Stupid Or Prejudiced Or Cruel, It Is A Sign Of Merit To Be Out Of Harmony With It.

Most Political Leaders Acquire Their Position By Causing Large Numbers Of People To Believe That These Leaders Are Actuated By Altruistic Desires

The Search For Something Permanent Is One Of The Deepest Of The Instincts Leading Men To Philosophy.

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

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.

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

There Are Two Ways Of Avoiding Fear: One Is By Persuading Ourselves That We Are Immune From Disaster, And The Other Is By The Practice Of Sheer Courage. The Latter Is Difficult, And To Everybody Becomes Impossible At A Certain Point. The Former Has Therefore Always Been More Popular. Primitive Magic Has The Purpose Of Securing Safety, Either By Injuring Enemies, Or By Protecting Oneself By Talismans, Spells, Or Incantations.

The Doctrine (of) Maintaining That The Language Of Daily Life, With Words Used In Their Ordinary Meanings, Suffices For Philosophy . . . I Find Myself Totally Unable To Accept . . . . Because It Makes Almost Inevitable The Perpetuation Amongst Philosophers Of The Muddle-headedness They Have Taken Over From Common Sense.

Physics, Owing To The Simplicity Of Its Subject Matter, Has Reached A Higher State Of Development Than Any Other Science.

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

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

Science Can Teach Us, And I Think Our Hearts Can Teach Us, No Longer To Look Around For Imaginary Supporters, No Longer To Invent Allies In The Sky, But Rather To Look To Our Own Efforts Here Below To Make The World A Fit Place To Live.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Doubt And Certainty

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.

In Regard To The Past, Where Contemplation Is Not Obscured By Desire And The Need For Action, We See, More Clearly Than In The Lives About Us, The Value For Good And Evil, Of The Aims Men Have Pursued And The Means They Have Adopted. It Is Good, From Time To Time, To View The Present As Already Past, And To Examine What Elements It Contains That Will Add To The World's Store Of Permanent Possessions, That Will Live And Give Life When We And All Our Generation Have Perished.

Even When The Experts All Agree, They May Well Be Mistaken.

Marx's Father Became A Christian When Marx Was A Little Boy, And Some, At Least, Of The Dogmas He Must Have Then Accepted Seem To Have Born Fruit In His Son's Psychology.

When The Intensity Of Emotional Conviction Subsides, A Man Who Is In The Habit Of Reasoning Will Search For Logical Grounds In Favour Of The Belief Which He Finds In Himself.

The Reformative Effect Of Punishment Is A Belief That Dies Hard, Chiefly I Think, Because It Is So Satisfying To Our Sadistic Impulses.

All The Time That He Can Spare From The Adornment Of His Person, He Devotes To The Neglect Of His Duties.

I Hate The World And Almost All The People In It. I Hate The Labour Congress And The Journalists Who Send Men To Be Slaughtered, And The Fathers Who Feel A Smug Pride When Their Sons Are Killed, And Even The Pacifists Who Keep Saying Human Nature Is Essentially Good, In Spite Of All The Daily Proofs To The Contrary. I Hate The Planet And The Human Race—i Am Ashamed To Belong To Such A Species.

Morality In Sexual Relations, When It Is Free From Superstition, Consists Essentially In Respect For The Other Person, And Unwillingness To Use That Person Solely As A Means Of Personal Gratification, Without Regard To His Or Her Desires.

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.

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

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

To Be Without Some Of The Things You Want Is An Indispensable Part Of Happiness.

Stupidity And Unconscious Bias Often Work More Damage Than Venality.

The Use Of Force Stands In Need Of Control By A Public Neutral Authority, In The Interests Of Liberty No Less Than Of Justice. Within A Nation, This Public Authority Will Naturally Be The State; In Relations Between Nations, If The Present Anarchy Is To Cease, It Will Have To Be Some International Parliament.

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. I Cannot, However, Deny That It Has Made Some Contributions To Civilisation. It Helped In Early Days To Fix The Calendar, And It Caused Egyptian Priests To Chronicle Eclipses With Such Care That In Time They Became Able To Predict Them. These Two Services I Am Prepared To Acknowledge, But I Do Not Know Of Any Others.

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.

The Scientific Attitude Of Mind Involves A Sweeping Away Of All Other Desires In The Interests Of The Desire To Know-it Involves Suppression Of Hopes And Fears, Loves And Hates, And The Whole Subjective Emotional Life, Until We Become Subdued To The Material, Able To See It Frankly, Without Preconceptions, Without Bias, Without Any Wish Except To See It As It Is, And Without Any Belief That What It Is Must Be Determined By Some Relation, Positive Or Negative, To What We Should Like It To Be, Or To What We Can Easily Imagine It To Be.

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.

It Is Permissible With Certain Precautions To Speak In Print Of Coitus, But It Is Not Permissible To Employ The Monosyllabic Synonym For This Word.

Boredom Is... A Vital Problem For The Moralist, Since Half The Sins Of Mankind Are Caused By The Fear Of It.

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

Fundamental Happiness Depends More Than Anything Else Upon What May Be Called A Friendly Interest In Persons And Things.

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

John Locke Invented Common Sense, And Only Englishmen Have Had It Ever Since!

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

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.

For My Part I Distrust All Generalizations About Women, Favorable And Unfavorable, Masculine And Feminine, Ancient And Modern; All Alike, I Should Say, Result From Paucity Of Experience.

Masculine And Feminine

... Mathematical Knowledge ... Is, In Fact, Merely Verbal Knowledge. "3" Means "2+1", And "4" Means "3+1". Hence It Follows (though The Proof Is Long) That "4" Means The Same As "2+2". Thus Mathematical Knowledge Ceases To Be Mysterious.

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.

People Are Said To Believe In God, Or To Disbelieve In Adam And Eve. But In Such Cases What Is Believed Or Disbelieved Is That There Is An Entity Answering A Certain Description. This, Which Can Be Believed Or Disbelieved Is Quite Different From The Actual Entity (if Any) Which Does Answer The Description. Thus The Matter Of Belief Is, In All Cases, Different In Kind From The Matter Of Sensation Or Presentation, And Error Is In No Way Analogous To Hallucination. A Hallucination Is A Fact, Not An Error; What Is Erroneous Is A Judgment Based Upon It.

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.

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

What Hunger Is In Relation To Food, Zest Is In Relation To Life.

[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.

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

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

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 Dictum That Human Nature Cannot Be Changed Is One Of Those Tiresome Platitudes That Conceal From The Ignorant The Depths Of Their Own Ignorance.

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

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

Philosophy, For Plato, Is A Kind Of Vision, The 'vision Of Truth'...everyone Who Has Done Any Kind Of Creative Work Has Experienced, In A Greater Or Less Degree, The State Of Mind In Which, After Long Labour, Truth Or Beauty Appears, Or Seems To Appear, In A Sudden Glory - It May Only Be About Some Small Matter, Or It May Be About The Universe. I Think That Most Of The Best Creative Work, In Art, In Science, In Literature, And In Philosophy, Has Been A Result Of Just Such A Moment.

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

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

Insight, Untested And Unsupported, Is An Uncertain Guarantee Of The Truth.

Hitler Is An Outcome Of Rousseau.

Have No Respect For The Authority Of Others, For There Are Always Contrary Authorities To Be Found

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.

History Is Valuable, To Begin With, Because It Is True; And This, Though Not The Whole Of Its Value, Is The Foundation And Condition Of All The Rest. That All Knowledge, As Such, Is In Some Degree Good, Would Appear To Be At Least Probable; And The Knowledge Of Every Historical Fact Possesses This Element Of Goodness, Even If It Posses No Other.

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.

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

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

The Frequency With Which A Man Experiences Lust Depends Upon His Own Physical Condition, Whereas The Occasion Which Rouse Such Feelings In Him Depend Upon The Social Conventions To Which He Is Accustomed

Admit At Least One Painful Truth To Yourself Every Day. Teach Yourself To Feel That Life Would Still Be Worth Living Even If You Were Not Immeasurably Superior To All Your Friends. Exercises Of This Sort, Prolonged Through Several Years, Will At Last Enable You To Admit Facts Without Flinching, And Will, In So Doing, Free You From The Empire Of Fear Over A Very Large Field.

Hell: A Place Where The Police Are German, The Motorists French And The Cooks English.

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

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.

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.

War Can Only Be Abolished By The Establishment Of A World Government.

World Government

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

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

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

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.

To The Primitive Mind, Everything Is Either Friendly Or Hostile; But Experience Has Shown That Friendliness And Hostility Are Not The Conceptions By Which The World Is To Be Understood.

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

Some `advanced Thinkers' Are Of The Opinion That Anyone Who Differs From The Conventional Opinion Must Be In The Right. This Is A Delusion; If It Were Not, Truth Would Be Easier To Come By Than It Is.

It Is Not What The Man Of Science Believes That Distinguishes Him, But How And Why He Believes It. His Beliefs Are Tentative, Not Dogmatic; They Are Based On Evidence, Not On Authority Or Intuition.

The Most Essential Characteristic Of Scientific Technique Is That It Proceeds From Experiment, Not From Tradition. The Experimental Habit Of Mind Is A Difficult One For Most People To Maintain; Indeed, The Science Of One Generation Has Already Become The Tradition Of The Next

Man Can Be Scientifically Manipulated.

No People Anywhere In The World Would Accept Being Expelled En Masse From Their Own Country; How Can Anyone Require The People Of Palestine To Accept A Punishment Which Nobody Else Would Tolerate?

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

To Avoid The Various Foolish Opinions To Which Mankind Are Prone, No Superhuman Genius Is Required. A Few Simple Rules Will Keep You, Not From All Error, But From Silly Error.

It Is Odd That Neither The Church Nor Modern Public Opinion Condemns Petting, Provided It Stops Short At A Certain Point. At What Point Sin Begins Is A Matter As To Which Casuists Differ. One Eminently Orthodox Catholic Divine Laid It Down That A Confessor May Fondle A Nun's Breasts, Provided He Does It Without Evil Intent. But I Doubt Whether Modern Authorities Would Agree With Him On This Point.

The Saviors Of The World, Society's Last Hope.

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

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.

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.

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.

Men Who Allow Their Love Of Power To Give Them A Distorted View Of The World Are To Be Found In Every Asylum: One Man Will Think He Is The Governor Of The Bank Of England, Another Will Think He Is The King, And Yet Another Will Think He Is God. Highly Similar Delusions, If Expressed By Educated Men In Obscure Language, Lead To Professorships Of Philosophy; And If Expressed By Emotional Men In Eloquent Language, Lead To Dictatorships.

Ants And Savages Put Strangers To Death.

The Above Proposition Is Occasionally Useful.

People Who Are Vigorous And Brutal Often Find War Enjoyable.

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

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.

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.

Right Discipline Consists, Not In External Compulsion, But In The Habits Of Mind Which Lead Spontaneously To Desirable Rather Than Undesirable Activities.

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

(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.

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

Love Can Only Flourish As Long As It Is Free And Spontaneous; It Tends To Be Killed By The Thought That It Is A Duty. To Say That It Is Your Duty To Love So-and-so Is The Surest Way To Cause You To Hate Him Or Her.

I Do Not Pretend To Be Able To Prove That There Is No God. I Equally Cannot Prove That Satan Is A Fiction. The Christian God May Exist; So May The Gods Of Olympus, Or Of Ancient Egypt, Or Of Babylon. But No One Of These Hypotheses Is More Probable Than Any Other: They Lie Outside The Region Of Even Probable Knowledge, And Therefore There Is No Reason To Consider Any Of Them.

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

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

A Life Without Adventure Is Likely To Be Unsatisfying, But A Life In Which Adventure Is Allowed To Take Whatever Form It Will Is Sure To Be Short.

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

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

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.

It Is Impossible To Read In America, Except On A Train, Because Of The Telephone. Everyone Has A Telephone, And It Rings All Day And Most Of The Night.

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

Idealism And Realism

Those Who Forget Good And Evil And Seek Only To Know The Facts Are More Likely To Achieve Good Than Those Who View The World Through The Distorting Medium Of Their Own Desires.

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

When All Experts Agree, You Need To Watch Out.

Men Fear Thought As They Fear Nothing Else On Earth - More Than Ruin, More Even Than Death. Thought Is Subversive And Revolutionary, Destructive And Terrible, Thought Is Merciless To Privilege, Established Institutions, And Comfortable Habits; Thought Is Anarchic And Lawless, Indifferent To Authority, Careless Of The Well-tried Wisdom Of The Ages. Thought Looks Into The Pit Of Hell And Is Not Afraid ... Thought Is Great And Swift And Free, The Light Of The World, And The Chief Glory Of Man.

Your Writing Is Never As Good As You Hoped; But Never As Bad As You Feared.

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

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.

Aristotle Maintained That Women Have Fewer Teeth Than Men; Although He Was Twice Married, It Never Occurred To Him To Verify This Statement By Examining His Wives' Mouths.

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

Who Ever Heard A Theologian Preface His Creed, Or A Politician Conclude His Speech With An Estimate Of The Probable Error Of His Opinion?

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

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

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

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.

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.'

One Of The Symptoms Of Approaching Nervous Breakdown Is The Belief That One's Work Is Terribly Important, And That To Take A Holiday Would Bring All Kinds Of Disaster. If I Were A Medical Man, I Should Prescribe A Holiday To Any Patient Who Considered His Or Her Work Important.

The Military Superiority Of Europe To Asia Is Not An Eternal Law Of Nature, As We Are Tempted To Think, And Our Superiority In Civilization Is A Mere Delusion.

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.

Indemnity For The Past And Security For The Future.

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.

After Ages During Which The Earth Produced Harmless Trilobites And Butterflies, Evolution Progressed To The Point At Which It Generated Neros, Genghis Khans, And Hitlers. This, However, Is A Passing Nightmare; In Time The Earth Will Become Again Incapable Of Supporting Life, And Peace Will Return.

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.

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.

... The Whole World Of Loneliness, Poverty, And Pain Make A Mockery Of What Human Life Should Be.

My Doctor Said To Me Afterwards, 'when You Were Ill You Behaved Like A True Philosopher. Every Time You Came To Yourself You Made A Joke.' I Never Had A Compliment That Pleased Me More.

Unhappy Business Men, I Am Convinced, Would Increase Their Happiness More By Walking Six Miles Every Day Than By Any Conceivable Change Of Philosophy.

Clergymen Almost Necessarily Fail In Two Ways As Teachers Of Morals. They Condemn Acts Which Do No Harm And They Condone Acts Which Do Great Harm.

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

The Secrets To Happiness Include Enterprise, Exploration Of One's Interests And The Overcoming Of Obstacles.

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

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

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H. P. Blavatsky

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