I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the reliance on faith or religion as a means to face life's challenges, equating this reliance to cowardice.
Bertrand Russell suggests that an individual's need for faith or religion to cope with life reflects a form of cowardice. He argues that such reliance should not be deemed admirable simply because it pertains to spirituality, but should instead be recognized as a weakness, challenging societal norms that praise faith while disregarding the necessity for personal courage and rationality in facing life's uncertainties.
In practice
In a debate on the necessity of belief, one might quote Russell to emphasize the importance of individual courage over blind faith.
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.
Equality, absolutely, that's what defines us. It's what makes us great. If it doesn't sit well with your religion, let your God sort it out in the end, but that's us. We're equal
An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.
The sinews of war are infinite money.
Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together.
If truth is not undergirded by love, it makes the possessor of that truth obnoxious and the truth repulsive.
The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
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