It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
Interpretation
Thought is constrained by societal pressures, particularly economic ones.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell highlights the idea that the freedom of thought is greatly limited when expressing certain opinions can lead to severe consequences, such as losing one's job or financial stability. He suggests that true intellectual freedom is compromised when individuals feel compelled to conform to widely accepted views for the sake of survival, thus revealing the tension between personal beliefs and societal expectations.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of free expression in academia.
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.
When Sunday loses its fundamental meaning and becomes subordinate to a secular concept of weekend dominated by such things as entertainment and sport, people stay locked within a horizon so narrow that they can no longer see the heavens.
To practice virtue is to selflessly offer assistance to others, giving without limitation one's time, abilities, and possessions in service, whenever and wherever needed, without prejudice concerning the identity of those in need.
Impossibility is only a sum of greater unrealised possibles. It veils an advanced stage and a yet unaccomplished journey.
A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted.
This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living and hard dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it. This was an age of extremes, a fascinating century of freaks... but nobody loved it.
When people call people nerds, mostly what they're saying is, 'you like stuff.' Which is not a good insult at all, like, 'you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human conscience.
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