It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Interpretation
Our fixation on material possessions hinders us from achieving true freedom and dignity.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell reflects on the idea that an excessive focus on material wealth and possessions can become an obstacle to experiencing genuine freedom and living a noble life. It suggests that true liberation and nobility arise not from the accumulation of things but from a mindset that values experiences, relationships, and personal growth over material gain.
In practice
During a discussion on minimalism at a community event.
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.
Often when He comes, He finds the soul occupied. Other guests are there, and He has to turn away. He cannot gain entry, for we love and desire other things; therefore, His gifts, which He is offering to everyone unceasingly, must remain outside.
Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex.
But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live.
I'm craving more soul, I'm craving more truth, I'm craving more socially - just people that are aware of what's going on in the world.
The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.
There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean - hell, I know that.
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