There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that relying on comforting beliefs instead of confronting reality shows weakness.
Bertrand Russell critiques those who seek solace in comforting myths rather than confronting the harsh realities of life. He implies that true strength lies in the ability to face challenges and uncertainties directly, rather than escaping into illusions that provide temporary relief but do not address the underlying difficulties.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about facing personal challenges in therapy.
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.
A man is an angel that has gone deranged.
We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable's handbook, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they are overloaded.
Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons.
To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.
We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything.
We will be remembered only if we give to our younger generation a prosperous and safe India, resulting out of economic prosperity coupled with civilizational heritage.
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