A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.
Interpretation
Rationality is determined by the extent to which one's intelligence guides their desires.
Bertrand Russell's quote suggests that the degree of a person's rationality is directly linked to how effectively their intelligence governs their emotional and instinctual desires. When a person's intelligence is able to analyze, understand, and control their impulses, they can make more reasoned decisions that align with rational thought rather than being led by unchecked desires.
In practice
During a discussion on decision-making ethics, one might say, 'As Bertrand Russell pointed out, a man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.'
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.
Can one alter oneΒ΄s chief feature?" asked someone else. First it is necessary to know it. If you know it, much will depend on the quality of your knowing. If you know it well, then it is possible to change it.
Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left.
The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.
The great religions are the ships, Poets the life boats. Every sane person I know has jumped overboard.
The hate directed against the colored people here in St. Louis has always given me a sad feeling... How can you expect the world to believe in you and respect your preaching of democracy when you yourself treat your colored brothers as you do?
We see the world, not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.
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