There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority.
Interpretation
The quote discusses three drastic methods to control population stability, hinting at their moral implications.
Bertrand Russell highlights the severe consequences and ethical dilemmas involved in managing population stability. He identifies birth control as a more humane approach, while infanticide and destructive wars, along with a state of general misery for the majority, serve as grim alternatives that indicate societal failure and moral decline. This quote provokes thought on the importance of humane and ethical solutions to social issues.
In practice
During a seminar on ethics in population control, this quote can be referenced to facilitate discussion.
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.
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
Wood feeds the fire which burns it.
It is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.
Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait a minute. "Once upon a time" is how all the best children's stories begin, and "prostitute" is a word for adults. How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since, at every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let's keep that beginning.
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