Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.
Interpretation
Fear can lead to cruel behaviors, and it's understandable that cruelty can be intertwined with religious practices.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell suggests that fear often breeds cruelty in individuals and societies. He implies that when people are driven by fear, they may resort to cruel actions, and this is reflected in how some aspects of religion can perpetuate such cruelty, revealing a complex relationship between fear, morality, and religious beliefs.
In practice
During a debate on the influence of religion on morality, this quote could illustrate how fear affects ethical behavior.
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.
Manifest the divinity within you and everything will be harmoniously arranged around it.
Be silent. That heart speaks without tongue or lips.
The medical argument for animal testing doesn't stand up. Even if it did, I don't think we should kill other species. We think we're so much better; I'm not sure we are. I tell people, We've beaten into submission every animal on the face of the Earth, so we are the clear winners of whatever battle is going on between the species. Couldn't we be generous? I really do think it's time to get nice. No need to keep beating up on them. I think we've got to show that we're kind.
I've always had a really developed sense of justice. As a child, I would rotate my dolls' dresses for fear that they might come alive at midnight and one of them would always have the best dress on. Whatever it was that made me worry about my dolls I suppose has paid off in my career because, really, an actor is all about empathy and imagination. And those are the cornerstones of activism.
Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
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