I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.
Interpretation
The quote warns that science may serve the interests of those in power instead of contributing to human happiness.
Bertrand Russell expresses a concern that the advancements and applications of science could be co-opted by dominant groups to reinforce their power and control, rather than being used to enhance the well-being and happiness of all individuals. This reflection raises important ethical questions about the role of science in society and its potential to either uplift humanity or perpetuate inequality.
In practice
In a discussion about the ethical implications of new technologies, this quote can highlight the need for responsible use of science.
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 is how we have learnt to think about ourselves. It's not as though the Greeks and Romans are static entities out there to be discovered and translated. We make them speak, we talk to them, and they inform what we say.
The Trinitarian Christ is elevated above us; the Unitarian Christ is merely a moral man; neither can help us. The Christ who is the Incarnation of God, who has not forgotten His divinity, that Christ can help us, in Him there is no imperfection.
Every country has a founding mythology. For Americans, it starts with our first president's youthful encounter with a cherry tree and refusal to tell a lie. Mr. Trump would do well to find inspiration in that story, which goes to the heart of what makes America different - and our foreign policy effective - around the world.
Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.
Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.
In the current socio-political climate, he said to himself, committing suicide is absurd and redundant. Better to become an undercover poet.
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