Sayings & Quotes

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£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 existenceÔÇØ
Bertrand Russell

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£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 made them.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£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.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.ÔÇØ

Bertrand Russell

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.ÔÇØ


ÔÇ£To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.ÔÇØ

Bertrand Russell

[zqwerty]

Bertrand Russell is held in high esteem by many people who originate from U.K., and rightly so, my Mum mentioned his name sometimes in the evolution vs deity debates we had all that time ago, thanks Lilith7.

[Lilith7]

Bertrand Russell is held in high esteem by many people who originate from U.K., and rightly so, my Mum mentioned his name sometimes in the evolution vs deity debates we had all that time ago, thanks Lilith7.

You're welcome, I've a few of his since he just seems to make good sense. I wish we all could.

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. ThatÔÇÖs if you want to teach them to think.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.ÔÇØ


Bertrand Russell

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.ÔÇØ
Bertrand Russell

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.ÔÇØ

Bertrand Russell

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£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.ÔÇØ


ÔÇ£Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.ÔÇØ


ÔÇ£There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.ÔÇØ
Bertrand Russell

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.ÔÇØ

Bertrand Russell

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£The secret of happiness is this: let your interest be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons who interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile. ÔÇØ
Bertrand Russell

[zqwerty]

"You should not be afraid of someone who has a library and reads many books; you should fear someone who has only one book; and he considers it sacred, but he has never read it." - Friedrich Nietzsche

[zqwerty]

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."

- Captain Jean-Luc Picard

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.ÔÇØ

Bertrand Russell

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't knowÔÇØ

Bertrand Russell

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£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. ÔÇØ

ÔÇ£What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.ÔÇØ
Bertrand Russell

ÔÇ£Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be kept by understanding.ÔÇØ
Albert Einstein

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£If as a society we can accept the need to maintain a vital interest in every child born in this country every moment of every day & work tpgether to achieve that aim, the need for more prisons & more youth justice residences will abate, the number of people whose lives are forever changed by the commission of a violent offence (or ram raid) will lessen & the magic that sits inside every child born in NZ will have the opportunity to flourish.ÔÇØ (The journey to prison, p 131)
Celia Lashlie

ÔÇ£We sow hatred of others fueled by what we think is true, or what we want to be true, without regard to what is true.
Cultural & politicial factions battle for the souls of nations & communities & of nations. We've lost sight of what distinguishes facts from opinions.
We're quick with acts of agression & slow with acts of kindness.ÔÇØ
Neil deGrasse Tyson

ÔÇ£Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention.ÔÇØ
Richard P Feynman

[R2x1]

"There are men running governments who shouldn't be allowed to play with matches."
Will Rogers.

[Lilith7]

"There are men running governments who shouldn't be allowed to play with matches."
Will Rogers.

Oh, I'm nicking that one!

[Lilith7]

ÔÇ£When you consider that god could have commanded anything he wanted ÔÇô anything! - the ten commandments have got to rank as one of the greatest missed opportunities of all time. How different history would have been had he clearly & unmistakably forbidden war,tyranny, taking over other people's countries,slavery,exploitation of workers,cruelty to children, wife beating, stoning, treating women ÔÇô or anyone ÔÇô as chattels or inferior beings.ÔÇØ
Katha Pollitt

ÔÇ£We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us very special.ÔÇØ
Stephen Hawking

ÔÇ£I will always be on the side of those who have nothing & who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace.ÔÇØ
Frederico Garcia Lorca