Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.
Interpretation
Dogmatism blocks our ability to find true happiness.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell suggests that being dogmatic, or adhering rigidly to established beliefs without consideration for other perspectives, significantly hampers our capacity for happiness. He implies that flexibility of thought and openness to different ideas are essential for personal fulfillment and joy in life.
In practice
In a speech about promoting mental health, one could mention this quote to highlight the importance of open-mindedness.
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.
In lazy apathy let stoics boast, their virtue fix'd: 't is fix'd as in a frost; contracted all, retiring to the breast; but strength of mind is exercise, not rest.
When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this futile conflict, this inner state of war.
In my investigation in the service of the god I found that those who had the highest reputation were nearly the most deficient, while those who were thought to be inferior were more knowledgeable.
You are free, but you have to choose. An open oven bakes no bread
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.
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