Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
Interpretation
Ethics involves guiding others towards making sacrifices for mutual cooperation.
Bertrand Russell's quote highlights the foundational role of ethics in fostering cooperation among individuals. He suggests that ethics is not merely about personal morality but also about persuading others to engage in self-sacrifice in order to achieve common goals, implying that mutual cooperation often requires individuals to set aside their own interests for the greater good.
In practice
During a discussion on community service, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of self-sacrifice for the common good.
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.
Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.
Your will is the ego part of you that believes you're separate from others, separate from what you'd like to accomplish or have, and separate from God. It also believes that you are your acquisitions, achievements, and accolades. This ego will wants you to constantly acquire evidence of your importance... On the other hand, your imagination is the concept of Spirit within you. ...with imagination, we have the power to be anything we desire to be.
Whatever else there may be in our nature, responsibility toward truth is one of its attributes.
The struggle to end sexist oppression that focuses on destroying the cultural basis for such domination strengthens other liberation struggles. Individuals who fight for the eradication of sexism without struggles to end racism or classism undermine their own efforts. Individuals who fight for the eradication of racism or classism while supporting sexist oppression are helping to maintain the cultural basis of all forms of group oppression.
Yes, know thyself: in great concerns or small, be this thy care, for this, my friend, is all.
Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.
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