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The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.more George Bernard Shaw quotes |
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.more George Bernard Shaw quotes |
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.more George Bernard Shaw quotes |
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One of the most pathetic — and dangerous — signs of our times is the growing number of individuals and groups who believe that no one can possibly disagree with them for any honest reason.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim -- or arrogation -- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
'What freedom does a starving man have?' The answer is that starvation is a tragic human condition- perhaps more tragic than loss of freedom. That does not prevent these from being two different things.more Thomas Sowell quotes |
The authoritarian sets up some book, or man, or tradition to establish the truth. The freethinker sets up reason and private judgment to discover the truth... It takes the highest courage to utter unpopular truths.more Herbert Spencer quotes |
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is a proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is condemnation before investigation.more Herbert Spencer quotes |
Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.more Baruch Spinoza quotes |
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And the so-called sovereigns, in these different governments, are simply the heads, or chiefs, of different bands of robbers and murderers.more Lysander Spooner quotes |
The 'nations,' as they are called, with whom our pretended ambassadors, secretaries, presidents, and senators profess to make treaties, are as much myths as our own. On general principles of law and reason, there are no such 'nations.' ... Our pretended treaties, then, being made with no legitimate or bona fide nations, or representatives of nations, and being made, on our part, by persons who have no legitimate authority to act for us, have intrinsically no more validity than a pretended treaty made by the Man in the Moon with the king of the Pleiades.more Lysander Spooner quotes |
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only by incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness.more Leslie Stephen quotes |
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as plentiful as blackberries.more Leslie Stephen quotes |
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Men, to act with vigour and effect, must have time to mature measures, and judgment and experience, as to the best method of applying them. They must not be hurried on to their conclusions by the passions, or the fears of the multitude. They must deliberate, as well as resolve.more Joseph Story quotes |
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No human has yet grasped 1% of what can be known about spiritual realities ... I grew up Presbyterian. Presbyterians thought the Methodists were wrong. Catholics thought all Protestants were wrong. The Jews thought the Christians were wrong. So, what I'm financing is humility. I want people to realize that you shouldn't think you know it all.more John Templeton quotes |
Jurors have found, again and again, and at critical moments, according to what is their sense of the rational and just. If their sense of justice has gone one way, and the case another, they have found “against the evidence,” ... the English common law rests upon a bargain between the Law and the people: The jury box is where the people come into the court: The judge watches them and the people watch back. A jury is the place where the bargain is struck. The jury attends in judgment, not only upon the accused, but also upon the justice and the humanity of the Law.more E. P. Thompson quotes |
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.more Henry David Thoreau quotes |
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I know that most men -- not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems -- can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty -- conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.more Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi quotes |
Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.more Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi quotes |
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Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk
this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man
label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right,
you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.more Mark Twain quotes |
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.more Mark Twain quotes |
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The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.more John Updike quotes |
Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession -- their ignorance.more Hendrik van Loon quotes |
That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love and charity towards each other. more Virginia Declaration of Rights quotes |
It is the characteristic of the most stringent censorships, that they give credibility to the opinions they attack.more Voltaire quotes |
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Let the laws be clear, uniform and precise; to interpret laws is almost always to corrupt them.more Voltaire quotes |
Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.more Voltaire quotes |
Your book is dedicated
by the soundest reason.
You had better get out of France
as quickly as you can.more Voltaire quotes |
Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe...more Ludwig von Mises quotes |
There are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality, namely, those of teleology and causality. What cannot be brought under either of these categories is absolutely hidden to the human mind. An event not open to an interpretation by one of these two principles is for man inconceivable and mysterious. Change can be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior; for the human mind there is no third way available.more Ludwig von Mises quotes |
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.more George Washington quotes |
Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.more Alan Watts quotes |
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch somebody else doing it wrong, without comment.more T. H. White quotes |
Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence.more Albert Edward Wiggin quotes |
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.more Oscar Wilde quotes |
Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.more Walter E. Williams quotes |
To suppress minority thinking and minority expression would tend to freeze society and prevent progress… Now more than ever, we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.more Wendell L. Willkie quotes |
The wisest thing to do with a fool is to encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow citizens. Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to air.more Woodrow Wilson quotes |
Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.more Woodrow Wilson quotes |
