It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of holding beliefs based on truth rather than convenience or utility.
Bertrand Russell highlights the ethical responsibility of individuals to prioritize intellectual integrity over pragmatic reasoning. He argues that accepting beliefs solely for their perceived benefits can undermine the foundation of truthful understanding, suggesting that genuine belief should stem from a commitment to truth rather than the allure of usefulness.
In practice
In a discussion about ethics, I referenced Russell's view to stress the importance of truth in moral reasoning.
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.
Things denied, things untold, things hidden and disguised.
It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode.
And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy.
I think there are ways in which we censor ourselves; that's the most dangerous kind of censorship - that's how hegemony works.
And if my present deeds are foolish in thy sight, it may be that a foolish judge arraigns my folly.
The worst thing about movie-making is that it's like life: nobody can go back to correct the mistakes.
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