The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held; instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.
Interpretation
Liberal thinking is characterized by openness to change based on new evidence rather than rigidly holding onto beliefs.
This quote by Bertrand Russell emphasizes the importance of maintaining a flexible and open-minded approach to beliefs and opinions. Instead of adhering to ideas in a dogmatic way, one should hold them tentatively, ready to adapt and change in response to new information or evidence, highlighting the essence of intellectual humility and growth.
In practice
During a discussion on political views, one might quote this to advocate for an open-minded approach.
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.
We are not to preach the doing of good things; good deeds are not to be preached, they are to be performed.
Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
Very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies.
Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion; it is an evil government.
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