Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts.
Interpretation
Fear can lead to cruelty, and this relationship is reflected in religious practices. Science helps us to understand and challenge these fears.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell argues that fear is a fundamental driving force behind cruelty and often intertwines with religious beliefs. He suggests that as humanity begins to understand the world better through science, it can confront and overcome the fears and outdated beliefs that have historically contributed to cruelty and oppression associated with religion.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the intersections of fear, morality, and religion.
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.
A man's excellence is like that of water; It benefits all things without striving; It takes to the low places shunned by men. Water is akin to Tao. . . . In all the earth nothing weaker than water, Yet in attacking the hard, nothing superior, Nothing so certain in wearing down strength: There is no way to resist it. Note then: The weak conquer the strong, The yielding outlast the aggressors.
Sufre mas el que espera siempre que aquel que nunca espero a nadie? Does he who is always waiting suffer more than he who’s never waited for anyone?
The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope.
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
I have not asked for life._x000D_ But I try to accept whatever_x000D_ life brings without surprise._x000D_ And I shall depart again without having_x000D_ questioned anyone about my strange_x000D_ stay here on earth.
There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.
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