The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
Interpretation
Emotional responses are often less intense when we have a strong understanding of the facts.
Bertrand Russell's quote suggests that our emotional reactions to events or situations diminish in intensity as our understanding of the underlying facts increases. This reflects the idea that knowledge and rational thinking can temper our emotional responses, leading to a more balanced and thoughtful perspective on life.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about emotional intelligence education.
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.
Never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a "talent;" my sole concern has been to save myself by work and faith.
All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guess what was at the other side of the hill'.
My thing is this; if I'm sick enough to think it, then I'm sick enough to say it.
Old school new school need to learn though I burn baby, burn like Disco Inferno Burn slow like blunts with ya-yo Peel more skins than Idaho potato
Words are not trivial. They matter because they raise consciousness.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. Do not make yourself ill with overwhelm. There is a tendency to fall into being weakened by perseverating on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.
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