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.
Bertrand RussellRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques a narrow view of marriage as merely a means to avoid sin.
Bertrand Russell presents a critical perspective on St. Paul's view of marriage, suggesting that reducing the institution of marriage to solely its role in preventing fornication is akin to stating that baking bread is only meant to deter cake theft. This analogy highlights the inadequacy of such a simplistic and utilitarian approach to a complex human relationship, emphasizing that marriage encompasses far more than mere sexual ethics.
Themes
MarriageFornicationLoveEthicsRelationship
In practice
Example use cases
A debate on the philosophical implications of marriage in a sociology class.
More from Bertrand Russell
All quotes →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.
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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.
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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.
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Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
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Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
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