Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death.
Interpretation
People are often more afraid of deep thinking and self-reflection than of physical dangers or failures.
This quote by Bertrand Russell emphasizes the profound fear that many individuals have towards engaging in critical thinking and self-examination. It suggests that the discomfort associated with contemplating complex ideas or facing uncomfortable truths is greater than the fear of failure or even death itself, indicating the significance of mental engagement in the human experience and the extent to which avoidance can drive behavior.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of self-awareness in personal development.
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.
Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound, or smell of it
One must pass through the network of influence. One is obligated to be influenced, and one accepts this influence very naturally. From the start, one doesn't realize this. The first thing to know: one doesn't realize one is influenced. One thinks he is already liberated, and one is far from it!
If every man took only what was sufficient for his needs, leaving the rest to those in want, there would be no rich and no poor.
There is something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.
In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness.
How terrible it is to have no cares, no longings. I do not fit. I feel too deeply and want too much. As cages go, it is a gilded one, but I shall not live well in it or any cage for that matter.
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