Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Interpretation
Intense desires often stem from profound suffering.
This quote by Bertrand Russell suggests that when individuals experience significant distress or hardship, it can lead to the development of heightened hopes or aspirations. In essence, extreme circumstances can cultivate a longing for improvement or change, as people seek solace or betterment from their painful experiences.
In practice
In a motivational speech about overcoming obstacles, one might say, 'As Bertrand Russell once noted, extreme hopes are born from extreme misery, reminding us that our struggles can inspire our dreams.'
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.
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, 'The Intoxication of Life,' 'The Purpose of Life,' 'The Real Cause of Man's Distress,' 'The Journey to the Goal in Life,' and, one of my favorites, 'The Heart of Man.' They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't.
Spend too much time alone with your own words, and your writing grows anemic, in dire need of a transfusion.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.
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