Quotes on Freethinker

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

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

To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker.

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.

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.

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.

A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

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

Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

Because the only people for me are the mad ones.

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing.

But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.