I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.
Interpretation
Russell critiques the official Catholic stance on key social issues, warning of their potential harm to humanity.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell expresses his strong disapproval of the Catholic Church's positions on divorce, birth control, and censorship. He believes that these doctrines are not only restrictive but also pose a danger to human progress and well-being, as they limit personal freedom and hinder societal development. Russell's perspective emphasizes the importance of questioning authoritative beliefs, especially when they can adversely affect people's lives and choices.
In practice
In a lecture on the impact of religious doctrine in modern society.
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.
In the end, the art of hunger can be described as an existential art. It is a way of looking death in the face, and by death I mean death as we live it today: without God, without hope of salvation. Death as the abrupt and absurd end of life
If you can see the terrorists as a relative who's dangerously sick and we have to give them medicine and the medicine is love and compassion. There's nothing better.
Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns, or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values.
Perhaps September 11 could be called the first historic world event in the strictest sense: the impact, the explosion, the slow collapse - a gruesome reality literally took place in front of a global public.
He didn't mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn't matter.
I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.
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