In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Interpretation
Questioning assumptions helps to gain deeper insights and understanding.
Bertrand Russell emphasizes the importance of periodically reassessing and questioning the beliefs and truths we often take for granted. By placing a 'question mark' on our assumptions, we open ourselves to new perspectives and deeper understanding, ultimately enhancing our wisdom and outlook on life.
In practice
To inspire students to think critically during a lecture on philosophy.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
If, however, you take a moment to observe how you actually feel immediately after you criticise someone, you'll notice that you will feel a little deflated and ashamed, almost like you're the one who has been attacked. The reason this is true is that when we criticise, it's a statement to the world and to ourselves, "I have a need to be critical." This isn't something we are usually proud to admit.
Good morning, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? β’ β’ β’ β’ You think It's a happy beat?
Avoid banquets which are given by strangers an ignorant persons. But if there is ever occasion to join them, let your attention be carefully fixed, that you slip not into the manner of the vulgar (the uninstructed).
View the past as your enemy, and it will be an albatross. _x000D_ View it as your friend, and it will give you wings.
When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.
I need silence, and to be alone and to go out, and to save one hour to consider what has happened to my world, what death has done to my world.
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