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.
I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.
I remember a time when a cabbage could sell itself by being a cabbage. Nowadays itβs no good being a cabbage β unless you have an agent and pay him a commission. Nothing is free anymore to sell itself or give itself away. These days, Countess, every cabbage has its pimp.
To some extent, we've always had an admiration for extroversion in our culture. But the extrovert ideal really came to play at the turn of the 20th century when we had the rise of big business.
I don't look at my old work. I mean, they made nice books; the books were made without me, the one from last year and the one from this year. I - personally, I'm not interested in my own past. I'm only interested in today - perhaps tomorrow.
In 1968, I became a vegetarian after realizing that animals feel afraid, cold, hungry, and unhappy like we do.
When you have abandoned all past and future, it is as if you have come alive. You are here, mindful...the nature of all types of consciousness reveals itself.
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