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.
As I approached my 95th birthday, I was burdened to write a book that addressed the epidemic of 'easy believism.' There is a mindset today that if people believe in God and do good works, they are going to Heaven.
Only the shallow know themselves.
One area of law more than any other besmirches the constitutional vision of human dignity. . . . The barbaric death penalty violates our Constitution. Even the most vile murderer does not release the state from its obligation to respect dignity, for the state does not honor the victim by< emulating his murderer. Capital punishment's fatal flaw is that it treats people as objects to be toyed with and discarded. . . . One day the Court will outlaw the death penalty. Permanently.
Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction.
If the Philippines must remain under the control of Spain, they will necessarily have to be transformed in a political sense, for the course of their history and the needs of their inhabitants so require.
Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.
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