You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors.
Interpretation
Believing in the potential for individual action is essential for societal improvement.
Bertrand Russell's quote emphasizes the importance of individual belief and action in contributing to the creation of a better society. He likens the influence of good individuals to the electoral process, where every single vote counts toward the final outcome, suggesting that collective progress can only come from the commitment and goodness of each person within the community.
In practice
During a motivational speech about community service.
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.
It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.
But time is yet another of God's creations, and as such, it has a life of its own.
When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of an ounce.
This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.
The sinless One took on the face of a sinner so that we sinners could take on the face of a saint.
My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.
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