Do not feel certain of anything.
Interpretation
Certainty can be misleading and can limit our understanding and growth.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell emphasizes the importance of embracing uncertainty as a means to foster inquiry and growth. By recognizing that nothing is certain, we open ourselves up to new ideas and perspectives, which enhances our understanding of the world and encourages critical thinking.
In practice
In a discussion about scientific theories, one might quote this to highlight the evolving nature of knowledge.
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.
For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.
It is the resurrection that makes Good Friday good.
I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.
No man need fear death, he need fear only that he may die without having known his greatest power: the power of his free will to give his life for others
Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation: not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive from what ills you are free yourself is pleasant.
Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.