Freethinking Quotes & Sayings

The American tradition of separation of church and state grew directly from the freethinking of the Founders. After political independence, they considered independence of thought and belief a logical next step. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

When Sir Joshua Reynolds died
All Nature was degraded;
The King dropped a tear in the Queen's ear,
And all his pictures faded. — William Blake

I woke up completely entangled with Ranger. — Janet Evanovich

They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live. — Thomas Jefferson

Contention murders creativity and stupidity is in enmity with freethinking. — Joel T. McGrath

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. — Marcel Proust

Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness. — George Santayana

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment - an attitude that has never again left me.
- Albert Einstein, Autobiographical Notes, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp — Albert Einstein

If you just did what you wanted to do, and didn't care what anyone thought, you'd be Autistic. — Seamus McDuff

At one time,' Golenishchev continued, either not observing or not willing to observe that both Anna and Vronsky wanted to speak, 'at one time a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conception of religion, law, and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed. They grow up in ideas of negation in everything
in other words, utter savages. — Leo Tolstoy

Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. — Lawrence Lessig

I replied that England (the dear place of my nativity) was computed to produce three times the quantity of food, more than its inhabitants are able to consume, ... But, in order to feed the luxury and intemperance of the males, and the vanity of the females, we sent away the greatest part of our necessary things to other countries, from whence in return we brought the materials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend among ourselves. Hence it follows of necessity that vast numbers of our people are compelled to seek their livelihood by begging, robbing, stealing, cheating, pimping, forswearing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, freethinking, — Jonathan Swift

Never let a man stay the night," she told me. "Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic. — Janet Fitch

The harder I practiced, the luckier I got. — Gary Player

Badgers swarm out of the sand;
Talk and walk, don't run or stand.
Pritaries bite and bite again;
Kick and shout and run like wind."

Payne checked the small clock again. "Aye," he cut in. "Black Wolf never did get that last verse right. What she should have said was, 'Pritaries like to bite your ass; best to run away real fast. — Tara K. Harper

No, dearie. I don't need any seeds. And besides, I'm growing moor flowers. Wildflowers." "I didn't know you could, in this soil." "You can't, of course. That's the point. Flowers are freethinking things. They grow where they please. I'd like to see you try and tell a moor flower where to grow. — Victoria Schwab

We all have a thirst for wonder. It's a deeply human quality. Science and religion are both bound up with it. What I'm saying is, you don't have to make stories up, you don't have to exaggerate. There's wonder and awe enough in the real world. Nature's a lot better at inventing wonders than we are. — Carl Sagan

Small things lead to big changes. — Allen Hershkowitz

The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression — Albert Einstein

Let's face it, unsoothed by human kindness, souls recede. — Richard Christian Matheson

Spirituality is about being awake. It's the attempt to transcend the mundane, sleepwalking experience of life we all fall into, to tap into the wonder of being a conscious and grateful thing in the midst of an astonishing universe. It doesn't require religion. Religion can, in fact, and often does, blunt our awareness by substituting false (and dare I say inferior) wonders for real ones. It's a fine joke on ourselves that most of what we call spirituality is actually about putting ourselves to sleep. — Dale McGowan

I do not think anyone can read the letters which passed between Clarke and [Anthony] Collins without admitting that Collins, who writes with wonderful Power and closeness of reasoning, has by far the best of the argument, so far as the possible materiality of the soul goes; and that in this battle the Goliath of Freethinking overcame the champion of what was considered orthodoxy. — Thomas Henry Huxley

We fought for equality for all, for women too. For freethinking, fighting the lies of church and state, for what Nat called the Republic of Letters. That was what we believed in twenty years ago. But now, seems like all that has gone. It's church and Sunday best, and votes for men." "What — M.J. Carter

Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be. — Orson Scott Card

Thinking must never submit itself, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, if not to facts themselves, because, for it, to submit would be to cease to be. — Jules Henri Poincare

She wanted to write about something other then love. Yet her freethinking pen seemed more adhered to her heart then to her head. A battle she never felt worth fighting. — Coco J. Ginger

I'm not going to have a better day, a more magical moment than the first time I heard my daughter giggle. — Sean Penn

What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest! — Friedrich Nietzsche