I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions.
Interpretation
Changing one's opinions is a natural part of personal growth and intellectual honesty.
This quote by Bertrand Russell highlights the importance of being open to changing one's mind and beliefs as a sign of growth and maturity. Instead of viewing changes in opinion as a weakness, it suggests that adapting our views in light of new evidence or insights is a strength and reflects an evolving understanding of the world.
In practice
In a discussion about personal development, someone might quote Russell to emphasize the value of evolving perspectives.
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.
The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand.
No one ever seems to wonder what happens if it turns out we hate living on a planet? What if the sky’s too big? What if the air stinks? What if we go hungry?’ ‘And what if the air tastes of honey? What if there’s so much food we all get too fat? What if the sky is so beautiful we don’t get any work done because we’re all looking at it too much?
I was raised a black child in the South, where you're indoctrinated into a religion that an oppressor gave you.
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
Without moral and intellectual independence, there is no anchor for national independence.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.