I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.
Interpretation
Russell critiques the official Catholic stance on key social issues, warning of their potential harm to humanity.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell expresses his strong disapproval of the Catholic Church's positions on divorce, birth control, and censorship. He believes that these doctrines are not only restrictive but also pose a danger to human progress and well-being, as they limit personal freedom and hinder societal development. Russell's perspective emphasizes the importance of questioning authoritative beliefs, especially when they can adversely affect people's lives and choices.
In practice
In a lecture on the impact of religious doctrine in modern society.
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.
The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story.
Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.
Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.
Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.
May all sentient beings be happy and free of suffering.
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