
A merely borrowed belief is, at such time, like a rotten plank across a raging torrent. The moment we step upon it, it gives way beneath our feet.
Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)
volume I, chapter III: "Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals — continued", page 101 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=114&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)
A merely borrowed belief is, at such time, like a rotten plank across a raging torrent. The moment we step upon it, it gives way beneath our feet.
Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)
Science and the Unseen World (1929)
Context: However closely we may associate thought with the physical machinery of the brain, the connection is dropped as irrelevant as soon as we consider the fundamental property of thought—that it may be correct or incorrect.... that involves recognising a domain of the other type of law—laws which ought to be kept, but may be broken.<!--V, p.57-58
On pub culture in Goa, as quoted in " Pub culture needs to be controlled: Tourism minister http://www.livemint.com/Politics/RfmbkAe4cjK98SuqoAshSM/Pub-culture-needs-to-be-controlled-Tourism-minister.html", Live Mint (13 July 2014)
Fourth Lecture, p. 74.
The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950)
Peace and the Public Mind (1935)
Context: The conception that we can only protect ourselves if we are prepared to protect others surely ought to belong to the nursery stage of social education.
But such things as the mechanism of security through law, the place of force in society, are things not, it would seem, included usually in the common education of our peoples.
Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Lecture (December 19, 2007)
Interview with Jamie Bartlett, «'The guards don't run the prison, Islam does': my interview with a 'reformed' Tommy Robinson», The Telegraph (17 June 2014) http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/jamiebartlett/100013835/the-guards-dont-run-the-prison-islam-does-my-interview-with-a-reformed-tommy-robinson/
2014
Cassandra (1860)
Context: There is a physical, not moral, impossibility of supplying the wants of the intellect in the state of civilisation at which we have arrived. The stimulus, the training, the time, are all three wanting to us; or, in other words, the means and inducements are not there.
Look at the poor lives we lead. It is a wonder that we are so good as we are, not that we are so bad. In looking round we are struck with the power of the organisations we see, not with their want of power. Now and then, it is true, we are conscious that there is an inferior organisation, but, in general, just the contrary.