Opinions which justify cruelty are inspired by cruel impulses.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that cruel opinions stem from a person's own cruel nature.
Bertrand Russell's quote highlights the disturbing tendency of individuals to rationalize cruelty through their opinions. It implies that when people hold views that support cruel behavior, those opinions are often a reflection of their inner impulses and character, rather than an objective or ethical stance. This serves as a cautionary observation about the moral implications of aligning one's beliefs with harmful actions or ideologies.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the ethical implications of social media opinions that promote violence.
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.
History has its truth; and so has legend hers.
Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.
One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.
But lost chances are as much a part of life as chances taken, and a story cannot dwell on what might have been.
And yet," said Poirot, "suppose an accident-" "Ah, no, my friend-" "From your point of view it would be regrettable, I agree. But nevertheless let us just for one moment suppose it. Then, perhaps, all these here are linked together - by death.
The chief problem about death ... is the fear that there may be no afterlife - a depressing thought.
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