There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes.
Interpretation
Both extreme behaviors can lead to distorted perceptions of reality.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell highlights the idea that whether a person is engaging in excessive deprivation or excessive indulgence, both can lead to altered states of perception. It reflects the philosophical notion that our experiences, no matter how contradictory, can create illusions of reality that may seem heavenly or nightmarish, illustrating the balance needed in life.
In practice
This quote can be used in a philosophical discussion about the nature of reality.
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.
How necessary it is at all times to watch against the attempted encroachment of power, and to prevent its running to excess.
You've confused a war on your religion with not always getting everything you want.
I told you I would tell you my names. This is what they call me. I'm called Glad-of-War, Grim, Raider, and Third. I am One-Eyed. I am called Highest, and True-Guesser. I am Grimnir, and I am the Hooded One. I am All-Father, and I am Gondlir Wand-Bearer. I have as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die. My ravens are Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory; my wolves are Freki and Geri; my horse is the gallows.
Doubt is a precipice on the way to God. Blessed is he who is freed from its bonds. He who fares without any doubt, adhere to his footprints if you do not know the way. Cleave to the footprints of the deer and advance with care that you may reach the musk-gland. By means of such trekking, even if you walk on fire, you will reach the luminous peak.
A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
Water in the boat is the ruin of the boat, but water under the boat is its support.
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