Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that objective understanding often leads to better outcomes than being guided by personal desires.
Bertrand Russell expresses a profound insight into human nature and morality, indicating that a clear, objective understanding of reality—free from the biases of desire—can lead to better ethical outcomes. He argues that those who are capable of seeing the world as it truly is, rather than through their subjective lens, have a greater chance of achieving righteousness and fulfilling moral good, in contrast to those who are driven by selfish impulses.
In practice
During a discussion on ethics in a philosophy class, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of objective reasoning.
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.
Both described at the same time how it was always March there and always Monday, and then they understood that José Arcadio Buendía was not as crazy as the family said, but that he was the only one who had enough lucidity to sense the truth of the fact that time also stumbled and had accidents and could therefore splinter and leave an eternalized fragment in a room.
I began thinking about my skeleton, this solid, beautiful thing inside me that I would never see.
Bringing people together is what i call 'ubuntu,' which means 'I am because we are.' Far too often people think of themselves as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.
Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose_x000D_ _x000D_ he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it._x000D_ _x000D_ But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life_x000D_ _x000D_ that one exists for other people.
Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.
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