When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
Interpretation
True victory comes from reasoned argument rather than imposing authority.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell emphasizes the importance of engaging in reasoned discussions rather than relying on authority to achieve victory in any disagreement. He suggests that when faced with opposition, whether it comes from loved ones or others, one should use logical argumentation to persuade rather than simply exerting power or control, as victories won through authority are ultimately hollow and lack genuine substance.
In practice
This quote could be used in a family meeting to encourage healthy debate rather than power struggles.
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.
Often I have thought of the day when I gazed for the first time at the sea. The sea is vast, the sea is wide, my eyes roved far and wide and longed to be free. But there was the horizon. Why a horizon, when I wanted the infinite from life?
The greatest human attainment in all the world is for a life to be so surrendered to Him that the name of God Almighty will be glorified through that life.
I have tried in my way to be free.
Take note of the fact that I am a follower (of the religion) and not an innovator.
I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.
These are people who are capable of devotion, public devotion, to justice. They meant what they said and every day that passes, they mean it more.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.