We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.
Interpretation
Understanding extensively but lacking deep emotional connection can hinder a fulfilling life.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell highlights the imbalance between our intellectual knowledge and our emotional experiences. He suggests that while we may accumulate vast amounts of information and understanding, we often neglect the profound emotions and creativity that are essential for a truly good and enriching life, implying that a meaningful existence requires a balance of both intellect and emotional engagement.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech about pursuing passions.
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.
In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.
What's the go of that? What's the particular go of that?
I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church - things like that - I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.
What's quote-unquote a 'good' lawyer, doctor, or whatever the profession is. And if you're a male who grew up professionally in a male-dominated profession then your image of what a good lawyer is is a male image.
Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him.
Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage.
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