One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that while public opinion must be acknowledged for practical survival, excessive adherence to it equates to surrendering to an oppressive force.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell argues that the fear of societal judgment or public opinion should not control our actions beyond what is necessary for survival and societal acceptance. He emphasizes that while it is wise to consider the views of others to avoid dire consequences, such as starvation or imprisonment, to do so excessively is to willingly accept an unwarranted dominance over our lives. This perspective encourages individuals to maintain their autonomy and to question the pressures of conformity.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the importance of individuality in the workplace.
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.
People call you this or that. But I can't respond because then it seems like I'm defensive, you know, what does it matter, really?
We are always the same age inside.
The Work always leaves you with less of a story. _x000D_ Who would you be without your story? _x000D_ You never know until you inquire. _x000D_ There is no story that is you or that leads to you. _x000D_ Every story leads away from you. _x000D_ Turn it around; undo it. _x000D_ You are what exists before all stories. _x000D_ You are what remains when the story is understood.
What is a loophole? If the law does not punish a definite action or does not tax a definite thing, this is not a loophole. It is simply the law.
What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
Africaβs story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story.
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