Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
Interpretation
Indecision drains energy and yields no results.
This quote by Bertrand Russell emphasizes the mental and emotional toll that indecision takes on a person. It suggests that being stuck in a state of uncertainty not only exhausts us but also leads to a lack of progress, highlighting the importance of making choices and taking action in order to achieve meaningful outcomes.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage prompt decision-making.
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 does not matter how frequently something succeeds if failure is too costly to bear.
Everybody hates a prodigy, detests an old head on young shoulders.
A doctor who doesn't say too many foolish things is a patient half-cured.
β"Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behavior
I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.
If I had to give you one piece of advice it would be this: don't be intimidated by other people's opinions.
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