One must care about a world one will not see.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of considering the future and the well-being of others, even if we won't personally witness the results of our actions.
Bertrand Russell's quote speaks to the moral responsibility we have towards future generations and the world we leave behind. It suggests that an ethical life involves caring for the greater good beyond our personal experiences, highlighting the interconnectedness of human existence. By urging individuals to think about a world they will not see, it challenges us to act with foresight and compassion for others who will inhabit that world. This perspective encourages a mindset of selflessness and global responsibility.
In practice
In a speech about climate change, one might use this quote to inspire collective action for the environment.
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.
Death laid its eggs in the wound
The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness.
Anyone wanting to proclaim the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth must consider not only how to declare the gospel verbally but also how to demonstrate the gospel visibly in a world where so many are urgently hungry. If I am going to address urgent spriitual need by sharing the gospel of Christ or building up the body of Christ around the world, then I cannot overlook dire physical need in the process.
What scares me is what scares you. We're all afraid of the same things. That's why horror is such a powerful genre. All you have to do is ask yourself what frightens you and you'll know what frightens me.
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.
The kingdom of heaven is worth infinitely more than the cost of discipleship, and those who know where the treasure lies joyfully abandon everything else to secure it.
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