OPINION
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The history of the human intellect has proven beyond resonable doubt,
the complete impotence of the conservative mindset.
The evolution of ideas, the discovery of all things physical and philosophical,
has only come about through the abandonment, at some stage, of conservative thinking.
WORDS OF WISDOM
- "A proof for the existence of a caring Christian God, which has troubled theologians and philosophers
for millenia, was discovered in the 1940's. The proof comes from Adolf Hitler and Harry Truman --the
Holocaust and the man who ordered the dropping of the Atomic Bomb.
-Touche! he doesn't exist."
- "If ignorance is Bliss, why go to the trouble of being informed?"
- "The service you do for others is the rent you pay for the time you spend on earth."
- "It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them -the character, the heart,
generous qualities, progressive ideas."
- "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing."
- "Intellectual growth should commence at birth and ceases only at death."
- "Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not
himself find peace."
- "Far easier is it for the mind of Man to create God, than for God to create the Mind of Man."
- "The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible...."
- "It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go."
- "The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm."
(From The Prospects of Industrial Civilization [London: Allen & Unwin, 1923], p. 252; written in collaboration with Dora Russell)
- "In very abstract studies such as philosophical logic, ... the subject-matter that you are supposed to be thinking of is so exceedingly difficult and elusive that any person who has ever tried to think about it knows you do not think about it except perhaps once in six months for half a minute. The rest of the time you think about the symbols, because they are tangible, for the thing you are supposed to be thinking about is fearfully difficult and one does not often manage to think about it. The really good philosopher is the one who does once in six months think about it for a minute. Bad philosophers never do."
("The Philosophy of Logical Atomism", Logic and Knowledge, ed. R.C. Marsh (London: Allen & Unwin, 1956), p. 185)
- "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty--a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."
("The Study of Mathematics")
- " I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race."
(Education and the Social Order [London: Allen & Unwin, 1932])
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