It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true
Interpretation
Believing something without evidence is not a rational position.
This quote from Bertrand Russell emphasizes the importance of evidence in forming beliefs. To accept a proposition as true without any supportive grounds is seen as intellectually irresponsible, suggesting that critical thinking and skepticism are essential in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.
In practice
In a debate about climate change, one might use this quote to emphasize the need for scientific evidence.
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.
Americans tended to think of war as something that had to be done from time to time, for a particular purpose or goal. They fought not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of winning.
The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one.
The law speaks too softly to be heard amidst the din of arms.
Once we overcome our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe that utterly dwarfs β in time, in space, and in potential β the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.
Swans live wherever there is water, and leave the place where water dries up; let not a man act so - and comes and goes as he pleases.
A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means.
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