When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that when a government promotes a particular belief, it often does so out of insecurity about the validity of that belief.
Bertrand Russell's quote highlights the tendency of states to enforce specific doctrines in order to solidify their acceptance, revealing a lack of conclusive evidence supporting those beliefs. This implies that the need for indoctrination often stems from a fundamental uncertainty regarding the truth of the doctrine being promoted, rather than its inherent validity or soundness.
In practice
During a debate on education policy, one might use this quote to argue against standardized curricula that push certain ideologies.
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.
Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.
The desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone.
Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.
Since the world has existed, there has been injustice. But it is one world, the more so as it becomes smaller, more accessible. There is just no question that there is more obligation that those who have should give to those who have nothing.
Solidarity is not a matter of altruism. Solidarity comes from the inability to tolerate the affront to our own integrity of passive or active collaboration in the oppression of others, and from the deep recognition of our most expansive self-interest. From the recognition that, like it or not, our liberation is bound up with that of every other being on the planet, and that politically, spiritually, in our heart of hearts we know anything else is unaffordable.
I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.
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