Freethinkers Quotes

“All those ants scurrying about like rats in a maze, going back and forth to the same few locations day after day, thinking the cheese they’re sniffing for will somehow magically appear on the routes they cover over and over again. They’re born into the programmed maze, so they can’t even conceive of a different way of life. Not only can’t they believe in a different way of life, but they’re programmed to scoff and ridicule the few freethinkers who do. After the ridiculing, they go back to their programming, pushing buttons and pulling levers for no reason. Ah, the good old rat race that never ends till cancer comes a knockin’.”
― Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success

“If you were born with the ability to change someone’s perspective or emotions, never waste that gift. It is one of the most powerful gifts God can give—the ability to influence.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“If there was any great lesson in life it was this: No battle was ever won with silence.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“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; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Let us forget that we are Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians, or Free-thinkers, and remember only that we are men and women. After all, man and woman are the highest possible titles. All other names belittle us, and show that we have, to a certain extent, given up our individuality, and have consented to wear the collar of authority—that we are followers. Throwing away these names, let us examine these questions not as partisans, but as human beings with hopes and fears in common.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“Some people are Freethinkers from sheer stupidity. My Uncle Sosthenes was one of these. Some people are often religious for the same reason.”
― Guy de Maupassant, Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant

“It's tough to get out of one's inherited imbecilic culture, and a thus inherited or endowed lunatic belief system. A freethinker must overcome every deadened system. Especially one's own.”
― Fakeer Ishavardas

“Logically, this kind of atheism did not prove that there was no God.... On the contrary, Southwell was typical in placing the onus probandi on those who affirmed the existence of God and Holyoake regarded himself as an atheist only in his inability to believe what the churches would have him believe. They were content to show that the Christian concept of the supernatural was meaningless, that the arguments in its favor were illogical, and that the mysteries of the universe, insofar as they were explicable, could be accounted for in material terms.”
― Edward Royle

“I need to get people to question what they think they know, who they think they are, and what they believe to be absolute truth, what they think is real and not real. I need to get people to freethink. I have to. Because this is the answer, this is the way.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Science explains the how.

Philosophy explains the why.

Free-thinkers need both.”
― J.Adam Snyder

“The most regrettable consequence of the discontinuity in the record of American rationalist dissent is that its moral lessons must be relearned in every generation.

It is telling that even so voracious a reader as Garrison was beyond the midpoint of his life when he discovered his spiritual ancestor Thomas Paine. When your own mind is your own church, it can take a very long time for future generations to make their way to the sanctuary.”
― Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

“We see their lack of education as an advantage. It means no one taught them what to think—or how.”
― Vincent H. O'Neil, The Gathering Elements