The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.
Interpretation
Russell suggests that if the world is created with purpose, it implies a malicious intent, making randomness a more acceptable explanation.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell reflects on the nature of existence and the world we inhabit. He posits that if the world's complexity and difficulty stem from a deliberate design, it would imply a malevolent creator—an idea he finds troubling. Instead, he suggests that random chance and accident provide a more palatable and plausible explanation for life's intricacies, allowing for the acknowledgment of chaos rather than the burden of a sinister purpose behind our reality.
In practice
In a philosophy class when discussing the nature of existence.
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.
Political economy regards the proletarian like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle.
Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas. - Censure acquits the raven, but pursues the dove.
The system will always be defended by those countless people who have enough intellect to defend but not quite enough to innovate.
My understanding of my faith is that - through a Christian framework - part of what we are called to do is to lay down our own self-interests, after the model of divinity that comes into this world in the form of Christ and lays down his life. And in order to do that, you have to care about something or someone more than yourself.
At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.
Accept the present moment and find the perfection that is deeper than any form and untouched by time.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.