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.
Interpretation
Believing without evidence can lead to prejudice and a closed mind.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell emphasizes the dangers of adhering to beliefs regardless of evidence supporting them. Such an attitude fosters hostility towards factual information that contradicts one's preconceived notions, ultimately resulting in a narrow-minded approach to understanding the world.
In practice
In a debate about climate change, one might use this quote to illustrate the importance of being open to evidence.
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.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
Be calm. God awaits you at the door.
Where the bishop is present, there is the Catholic Church
Our religions will never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.
Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe strongly that such a law as one prohibiting liquor is foolish, and all the writers, keenly interested in human welfare whom I know, laugh at the prohibition law.
Song of God and Son of Man, there He hangs, bearing pains unutterable, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God.
I want to hear an alternative viewpoint, and I don't want girls to be defanged and declawed and pretty and mute.
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