Freethinker Quotes - Page 2

• Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Atheist, Faith Religion

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.82, Courier Corporation

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• For good people to do evil things, it takes religion.

  Steven Weinberg

  Religious, Atheist, If There Is A God

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• In view of the tide of religiosity engulfing a once secular republic it is refreshing to be reminded by Freethinkers that free thought and skepticism are robustly in the American tradition. After all the Founding Fathers began by omitting God from the American Constitution.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Father, Views, Republic

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• The freethinker has the same right to discredit the beliefs of Christians that the Orthodox Christians enjoy in destroying reverence, respect, and confidence in Mohammedanism, Mormonism, Christian Science, or Atheism.

  Theodore Schroeder

  Christian, Atheism, Mormonism

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• This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. . . . In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religious, Blessed, America

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.171, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I am an atheist. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If "atheist" means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am. But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like - humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic.

  Michael Shermer

  Atheist, Believe, Mean

  "Why I Am An Atheist" by Michael Shermer, michaelshermer.com. June 23, 2005.

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• The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.

  Jack Kerouac

  Hippie, Yawning, People

  On the Road pt. 1, ch. 1 (1957)

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• When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist, or an idealist; a Christian, or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last.

  Thomas Huxley

  Christian, Art, Atheist

  Thomas Henry Huxley (2012). “Collected Essays, Volume V Science and Christian Tradition: Essays”, p.237, tredition

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• And so [my brother] Gilbert and I, brought up without a formal religion, remained throughout our lifetimes just what Father was, freethinkers. And, likewise, doubters and dissenters and perhaps Utopians. Father's rule had been 'Question everything, take nothing for granted,' and I never outlived it, and I would suggest it be made the motto of a world journalists' association.

  George Seldes

  Brother, Father, World

  George Seldes (2011). “Witness to a Century: Encounters with the Noted, the Notorious, and the Three SOBs”, p.24, Ballantine Books

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• God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Thinking, Crooked

  "The Very Best of Friedrich Nietzsche: Quotes from a Great Thinker" by David Graham, (p. 4), September 22, 2014.

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• It has been claimed by many that Freethought does away with churches, creeds, Christs and even a God. So it does to a certain extent, but not as feared by Christians. Freethought has never said pull down your churches, burn up your creeds, crucify your savior or reject your god. No one ever knew a Freethinker to try to make laws to control people. All their efforts have been the other way, trying to tear down laws already made which control by "Thou shalt" and "thou shalt not."

  Etta Semple

  Christian, Law, People

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• My ancestors were Freethinkers - and that's what I am, except we're called secular humanists now.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Ancestor, Secular

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• This Old Testament - containing error, folly, absurdity and immorality - is by English statute law declared to be of divine authority, a blasphemy - if there were anyone to be blasphemed - blacker and more insolent than any word ever written or penned by the most hotheaded Freethinker.

  Annie Besant

  Errors, Law, Old Testament

  Annie Besant (2014). “The Christian Creed: Or, What it is Blasphemy to Deny”, p.56, The Floating Press

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• Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.

  Chapman Cohen

  Spiritual, Religious, Atheist

  "An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism" by Gordon Stein, Prometheus Books, (p. 258), 1980.

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• Freethinkers are occasionally thoughtful, though never free.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Thoughtful

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• Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

  Epicurus

  Atheist, Omnipotence, If There Is A God

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• Question with boldness even the existence of a god.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Atheist, Faith Religion

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.90, Rowman & Littlefield

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• What I was utterly convinced of, and still am, is the idea that the only responsibility the free intellectual has is vis-a-vis himself. He is not responsible to either a political party or a ruler.

  Tawfiq al-Hakim

  Party, Responsibility, Ideas

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• I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue.

  Carl Sagan

  Atheist, Believe, Thinking

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium”, p.245, Ballantine Books

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• e idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive. However, I am also not a "Freethinker" in the usual sense of the word because I find that this is in the main an attitude nourished exclusively by an opposition against naive superstition. My feeling is insofar religious as I am imbued with the consciousness of the insuffiency of the human mind to understand deeply the harmony of the Universe which we try to formulate as "laws of nature." It is this consciousness and humility I miss in the Freethinker mentality. Sincerely yours, Albert Einstein.

  Albert Einstein

  Religious, Attitude, Humility

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• Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  War, Past, Ideas

  "Daily News", February 18, 1905.

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• My ancestors were all Freethinkers, formerly Catholics. It was science and Darwin, in particular, that made them decide, as educated people, which they were, that the priest, nice as he was, didn't know what he was talking about.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Nice, Talking, People

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• The Church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon. And I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Motivational, Death, Faith

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• Is man one of God's blunders? Or is God one of man's blunders?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Funny, Death, God

  "Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, Maxims and Arrows, 7, 1888.

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• As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Prayer, Men, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.276, Library of America

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