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About this quote

What does it mean?
Indignation shows we have surrendered our thoughts but still cling to our desires.
In plain terms
Indignation is a surrender of mind, not of desire.
What can you take from it?
Beware letting frustration mute rational thought.

Where it applies

  • reacting to injustice
  • personal conflict

Putting it to work

  • practice mindful response
  • separate feeling from reasoning

Questions to consider

  • How can we keep desires in check while feeling indignant?
  • What strategies prevent thought surrender?

Another view

Desire may still dominate behavior despite rational clarity.

More from Bertrand Russell

  1. 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.

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  2. That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his bel…

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  3. The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things …

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