I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Interpretation
Bertrand Russell expresses skepticism about the truth of religions and believes they cause harm.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell articulates his strong conviction that organized religions are not only false but also detrimental to society. He suggests that the beliefs and practices surrounding religion can lead to harm, whether through dogma, conflict, or the suppression of critical thought. Russell's perspective invites us to consider the impacts of religious belief on both personal and societal levels, advocating for a more rational and evidence-based understanding of the world.
In practice
In a debate about the role of religion in society, one might cite this quote to argue against the influence of religion on morality.
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.
Give up identification with this mass of flesh as well as with what thinks it a mass. Both are intellectual imaginations. Recognise your true self as undifferentiated awareness, unaffected by time, past, present or future, and enter Peace.
After all Death is a Symbol that there was Life.
My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs).
I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.
Slavery was not a bad day on the job. It was not your boss yelling at you. It was not hard work for little pay. This was a full system of human subjugation.
The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
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