Quotes from essays in The Will to Doubt
Other Quotes
Belief in democracy, however, like any other belief, may be carried to the point where it becomes fanatical, and therefore harmful.
Nor does the democrat necessarily believe that democracy is the best system always and everywhere. There are many nations which lack the self-restraint and political experience that are required for the success of parliamentary institutions, where the democrat, while he would wish them to acquire the necessary political education, will recognize that it is useless to thrust upon them prematurely a system which is almost certain to break down. In politics, as elsewhere, it does not do to deal in absolutes, what is good in one time and place may be bad in another, and what satisfies the political instincts of one nation may to another seem wholly futile. The general aim of the democrat is to substitute government by general assent for government by force, but this requires a population that has undergone a certain kind of training. Given a nation divided into two nearly equal portions which hate each other and long to fly at each other's throats, the portion which is just less than half will not submit tamely to the dominatioin of the other portion, nor will the portion which is just more than half show, in the moment of victory, the kind of moderation which might heal the breach.
The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held but in how they are held, instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. This is the way opinions are held in science, as opposed to the way in which they are held in theology.
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
In the Middle Ages, when pestilence appeared in a country, holy men advised the population to assemble in churches and pray for deliverance; the result was that the infection spread with extraordinary rapidity among the crowded masses of supplicants.
Capitalists, militarists, and ecclesiastics co-operate in education because all depend for their power upon the prevalence of emotionalism and the rarity of critical judgment.
The important point is that, in all that differentiates between a good life and a bad one, the world is a unity, and the man who pretends to live independently is a conscious or unconscious parasite.
Reactionaries everywhere appeal to fear: in England, to fear of Bolshevism; in France, to fear of Germany; in Germany, to fear of France. And the sole effect of their appeals is to increase the danger against which they wish to be protected.
But nothing is accomplished by an attempt to make a portion of mankind secure at the expense of another portion--Frenchmen at the expense of Germans, capitalists at the expense of wage earners, white men at the expense of yellow men, and so on. Such methods only increase terror in the dominant group, lest just resentment should lead the oppressed to rebel. Only justice can give security; and by "justice" I mean the recognition of the equal claims of all human beings.
And above all there is the courage to think calmly and rationally in the face of danger, and to control the impulse of panic fear or panic rage.
--from "What I Believe" (1925)
Civilized states spend more than half their revenue on killing each other's citizens. Consider the long history of the activities inspired by moral fervor: human sacrifices, persecutions of heretics, witch-hunts, pogroms leading up to wholesale extermination by poison gases, which one at least of Dr. Barnes's episcopal colleagues must be supposed to favor, since he holds pacifism to be un-Christian. Are these abominations, and the ethical doctrines by which they are prompted, really evidence of an intelligent Creator? And can we really wish that the men who practiced them should live forever? The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.
--from "Do We Survive Death?" (1936)
To Dr. Faustus in his study Mephistophelis told the history of the Creation saying,
The endless praises of the choirs of angels had begun to grow wearisome; for after all, did he not deserve their praise? Had he not given them endless joy? Would it not be more amusing to obtain undeserved praise, to be worshipped by beings whom he tortured? He smiled inwardly, and resolved the great drama should be performed.
For countless ages the hot nebula whirled aimlessly through space. At length it began to take shape, the central mass threw off planets, the planets cooled, boiling seas and burning mountains heaved and tossed, from black masses of cloud hot sheets of rain deluged the barely solid crust. And now the first germ of life grew in the depths of the ocean and developed rapidly in the fructifying warmth of the vast forest trees, huge ferns springing from the damp mold, sea monsters breeding, fighting, devouring and passing away. And from the monsters, as the play unfolded itself, Man was born, with power of thought, the knowledge of good and evil, and the cruel thirst for worship. And Man saw that all is passing in this mad, monstrous world, that all is struggling to snatch, at any cost, a few moments of life before Death's inexorable decree. And Man said, There is a hidden purpose, could we but fathom it, and the purpose good; for we must reverence something, and in the visible world there is nothing of reverence. And Man stood aside from the struggle, resolving that God intended harmony to come out of human efforts. And when he followed the instincts which God had transmitted to him from his ancestry beasts of prey, he called it Sin, and asked God to forgive him. But he doubted whether he could be justly forgiven, until he invented a divine Plan by which God's wrath was to have been appeased. And seeing the present was bad, he made it yet worse, that thereby the future might be better. And he gave God thanks for the strength that enabled him to forgo even the joys that were possible. And God smiled; and when he saw that Man had become perfect in renunciation and worship, he sent another sun through the sky, which crashed into Man's sun, and all returned again to nebula.
Yes, he murmured, it was a good play; I will have it performed again.
--from "A Free Man's Worship"
There is in our day a kind of race between the increasing power of the state and the diminishing power of superstition. That the power of the state should increase seems inevitable, as we have seen in relation to children. But if these powers increase beyond a point while superstitions still control the majority, the unsuperstitious minority will be squeezed out by state propaganda, and further protest will become impossible in every democratic country.
--from "The New Generation"
The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected.
--from "The Problems of Philosophy" (Chapter XV)