One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.
Interpretation
Certainty can be misleading, while creativity and understanding often lead to uncertainty and questioning.
Bertrand Russell highlights the paradox of knowledge in our era: those who possess unwavering certainty often lack intelligence and insight, while those endowed with imagination and understanding grapple with doubt and indecision. This statement suggests that true wisdom comes from questioning rather than a blind acceptance of certainty, emphasizing the value of critical thinking and the complexity of understanding the world.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of critical thinking, one might say, 'As Bertrand Russell pointed out, one of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid.'
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.
Anything you rely on can become a crutch. And disabled or not, when you rely on something, that is what will cripple you.
An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving.
I adore the struggle you carry in yourself. I adore your terrifying sincerity.
Good thoughts keep off bad thoughts. They must themselves disappear before the state of realization.
Why was I chosen?' 'Such questions cannot be answered,' said Gandalf. 'You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.
I wrote the story myself. It's all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it.
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