When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that when a government promotes a particular belief, it often does so out of insecurity about the validity of that belief.
Bertrand Russell's quote highlights the tendency of states to enforce specific doctrines in order to solidify their acceptance, revealing a lack of conclusive evidence supporting those beliefs. This implies that the need for indoctrination often stems from a fundamental uncertainty regarding the truth of the doctrine being promoted, rather than its inherent validity or soundness.
In practice
During a debate on education policy, one might use this quote to argue against standardized curricula that push certain ideologies.
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.
For every force charged by God, may He be exalted, with some business is an angel put in charge.
At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity.
Where the apple reddens never pry - lest we lose our Edens, Eve and I.
We should cast aside all childish games that fetter and exhaust body, speech and mind._x000D_ _x000D_ Stretching out in inconceivable nonaction, in the unstructured matrix, the actuality of emptiness, _x000D_ _x000D_ where the natural perfection of reality lies, we should gaze at the uncontrived sameness of every experience, _x000D_ _x000D_ all conditioning and ambition resolved with finality.
Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian.
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