It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of understanding natural laws over mere prayer or humility when seeking to influence outcomes.
Bertrand Russell suggests that simply relying on prayer and humility is not sufficient for achieving one's desires or influencing events. Instead, he advocates for the acquisition of knowledge, particularly of the natural laws governing the world, as the true means to bring about desired changes. This highlights a philosophical approach towards understanding and shaping reality through informed action rather than purely spiritual or emotional appeals.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth and the role of education.
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.
More important than finding the teacher is finding and following the truth of the teaching.
A bad day for the ego is a good day for the soul.
Where I live, nobody who's fourteen is having sex and doing major drugs. And I think if you see it in the movies, you may be influenced by it. I think it's so important to preserve your innocence.
Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.
Be yourself and the people that don't mind are the people that matter.
My plea is that we stop seeking out the storms and enjoy more fully the sunlight...I am asking that we look a little deeper for the good, that we still our voices of insult and sarcasm, that we more generously compliment and endorse virtue and effort.
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