Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Interpretation
Humans inherently seek beliefs, filling gaps with poor choices when better options are absent.
This quote by Bertrand Russell highlights the human tendency to seek out beliefs and explanations, even when they are based on insufficient or flawed reasoning. Russell suggests that in the absence of strong evidence or rational grounds, people are prone to accept questionable or unfounded beliefs, which reflects a fundamental aspect of human nature and our search for understanding in an uncertain world.
In practice
In a discussion about misinformation, this quote underscores the need for critical evaluation of beliefs.
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.
If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human β I only love to be so.
Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, / The young are beautiful--but the old are more beautiful than the young.
It might be said that society speaks through the clothing it wears. Through its clothing it reveals its secret aspirations and uses it, at least in part, to build or destroy its future.
I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet.
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