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.
Certain people, in their eagerness to construct a world no external threat can penetrate build exaggeratedly high defense againts the outside world, againts new people, new places, different experiences and leave their own world stripped bare. It is there that bitterness begins irrevocable work.
Looking back on things, the view always improves.
One of the blessings of maturity is that it sometimes brings one greater courage to be truthful, regardless of what those who do not understand may think or say
A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy. (10)
Don't always try to be popular. It isn't possible for everyone to like you. It's far more important for you to like yourself. And when you respect yourself, strangely, you get more respect than when you court it from others.
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