Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
Interpretation
Ethics involves guiding others towards making sacrifices for mutual cooperation.
Bertrand Russell's quote highlights the foundational role of ethics in fostering cooperation among individuals. He suggests that ethics is not merely about personal morality but also about persuading others to engage in self-sacrifice in order to achieve common goals, implying that mutual cooperation often requires individuals to set aside their own interests for the greater good.
In practice
During a discussion on community service, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of self-sacrifice for the common good.
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.
Above or Love, Hope, Hate or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years in moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly; A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die.
Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts, unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.
How do we get out of our small mind? When we enquire into the core of our existence. What is life? Who am I? This spirit of self-inquiry can awaken something inside you.
One is forever throwing away substance for shadows.
This was not judgment day - only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.
There would be no great men if there were no little ones.
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