It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit; divorced from it, they remain barren.
Interpretation
Ideals need to be engaged with the real world to be effective; otherwise, they are unproductive.
Bertrand Russell's quote emphasizes the importance of integrating our ideals and beliefs into the practicalities of everyday life. It suggests that while our dreams and aspirations are vital, they only achieve their true potential when we actively engage with the world around us, rather than isolating them in theory. Without application and interaction with reality, our ideals become futile and do not yield any tangible results.
In practice
This quote could be used to inspire discussions on the importance of community involvement in a wedding speech.
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.
Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.
Maybe I`m getting to the age when I`m starting to be senile or nostalgic or both, but people are so angry now. You used to be able to disagree with people and still be friends. Now you hear these talk shows, and everyone who believes differently from you is a moron and an idiot - both on the Right and the Left.
This is what you know about someone you have to hate: he charges you with his crime and castigates himself in you.
I have got my story. Adoptees rarely get our stories. We only know what we are told. I don't even have my story, really. My mother won't tell me. She won't tell me who my father is. She won't tell me the story of my birth.
People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
If we don't know how to be alone, we'll only know how to be lonely.
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