Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.
Interpretation
Science alone cannot determine our moral values or ethics.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell suggests that while science provides us with knowledge about the world, it does not offer guidance on ethical principles or moral behavior. Ethics, which dictate how we should act and what is right or wrong, require insights beyond scientific reasoning, drawing upon philosophy, culture, and individual beliefs.
In practice
In a debate on the role of science in society, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for a moral framework.
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.
He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.
In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
We are finite and God will not call us everywhere or to support every worthy cause. And real needs are not far from us.
The trouble with righting some wrongs is that it makes the remaining ones seem even more unbearable.
She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.
I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I would cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense.
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