Belief in eternal hell-fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as.
I feel a real and solid pleasure when anybody points out a fallacy in any of my views, because I care much less about my opinions than about their being true.
Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.
One hundred and fifty years of science have proved more explosive than five thousand years of prescientific culture. It would be absurd to suppose that the explosive power of science is exhausted, or has even reached its maximum. It is far more likely that science will continue for centuries to come to produce more and more rapid changes.
The right age for marriage is thirty-seven in men, eighteen in women. We.
I do not agree with Plato, but if anything could make me do so, it would be Aristotle’s arguments against him.
Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: “Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.” Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment.
It may be laid down as a general rule to which there are few exceptions that, when people are mistaken as to what is to their own interest, the course that they believe to be wise is more harmful to others than the course that really is wise. Therefore anything that makes people better judges of their own interest does good.
In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.
To begin with rationality in opinion: I should define it merely as the habit of taking account of all relevant evidence in arriving at a belief. Where certainty is unattainable, a rational man will give most weight to the most probable opinion, while retaining others, which have an appreciable probability, in his mind as hypotheses which subsequent evidence may show to be preferable.
He had a great intellectual influence upon my generation, though in retrospect I do not think it was a very good one.
Next, he points out that good men are better to live among than bad men, and therefore he cannot be so foolish as to corrupt his fellow-citizens intentionally; but if unintentionally, then Meletus should instruct him, not prosecute him.
Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through history.
Suffering to the criminal can never be justified by the notion of vindictive punishment. If education combined with kindness is equally effective, it is to be preferred; still more is it to be preferred if it is more effective.
It is in the moments when the mind is most active and the fewest things are forgotten that the most intense joys are experienced.
Imagination is the goad that forces human beings into restless exertion after their primary needs have been satisfied.
While animals are content with existence and reproduction, men desire also to expand, and their desires in this respect are limited only by what imagination suggests as possible.
But sooner or later the oppressed class will argue that its superior virtue is a reason in favour of its having power, and the oppressors will find their own weapons turned against them. When at last power has been equalized, it becomes apparent to everybody that all the talk about superior virtue was nonsense, and that it was quite unnecessary as a basis for the claim to equality.
But although the world was happy, some savour had gone out of life, since safety had been preferred to adventure.
The romantic movement, in art, in literature, and in politics, is bond up with this subjective way of judging men, not as members of a community, but as aesthetically delightful objects of contemplation. Tigers are more beautiful than sheep, but we prefer them behind bars. The typical romantic removes the bars and enjoys the magnificent leaps with which the tiger annihilates the sheep. He exhorts men to imagine themselves tigers, and when he succeeds the results are not wholly pleasant.