A quotation from Bertrand Russell
I have known some pacifists who wished history taught without reference to wars, and thought that children should be kept as long as possible ignorant of the cruelty in the world. But I cannot praise the “fugitive and cloistered virtue” that depends upon absence of knowledge. As soon as history is taught at all, it should be taught truthfully. If true history contradicts any moral we wish to teach, our moral must be wrong, and we had better abandon it. I quite admit that many people, including some of the most virtuous, find facts inconvenient, but that is due to a certain feebleness in their virtue. A truly robust morality can only be strengthened by the fullest knowledge of what really happens in the world.
Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Education and the Good Life, Part 2, ch. 11 “Affection and Sympathy” (1926)
More about this quote: wist.info/russell-bertrand/822…
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