Freethought Quotes

“If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor... We find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. First, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications... That sect [Jews] had presented for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust... Jesus had to walk on the perilous confines of reason and religion: and a step to right or left might place him within the gripe of the priests of the superstition, a blood thirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. They were constantly laying snares, too, to entangle him in the web of the law... That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore.

[Letter to William Short, 4 August, 1820]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“No idea is above scrutiny and no people are beneath dignity.”
― Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue

“If you want to stay in for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows he is right. For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the propensity and vocation to free thinking - this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving "as if" they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“I leave pansies, the symbolic flower of freethought, in memory of the Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, who stood for equality, education, progress, free ideas and free lives, against the superstition and bigotry of religious dogma. We need men like him today more than ever. His writing still inspires us and challenges the 'better angels' of our nature, when people open their hearts and minds to his simple, honest humanity. Thank goodness he was here.”
― Bruce Springsteen

“People know when they are being lied to, they know when their rulers are absurd, they know they do not love their chains.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Indeed it may be said with some confidence that the average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. There are moments when his cogitations are relatively more respectable than usual, but even at their climaxes they never reach anything properly describable as the level of serious thought. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés. What they mistake for thought is simply a repetition of what they have heard. My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before and by thousands.”
― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report

“Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“The terrible error in the course of human civilization is undoubtedly the defective judgment that allowed religious authorities usurp the foundation of societal morality, in which all collective ethics of humankind must take a cause. This appalling blunder is comparable only to assigning the leper exclusive franchise to run beauty clinics in the society; this can only lead to cycles upon cycles of common infection syndrome.”
― Adebowale Babatunde Ojowuro, Echoes of Common Sense

“[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]
This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. iv, p. 327).”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Atheism is a natural result of intellectual honesty.”
― Paulo Bitencourt, Liberated from Religion: The Inestimable Pleasure of Being a Freethinker

“I don't reject God, because for me to be able to reject him he first would have to exist.”
― Paulo Bittencourt, Wasting Time on God: Why I Am an Atheist

“Everybody comes of age,
Very few come alive.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“Only love can bring full freedom, all else brings half freedom. What is half freedom you ask? When in the name of freedom you imprison yourself to one side or sect, everything outside that sect seems evil. For example, fundamentalists choose the side of blind faith, and every act of reason seems like blasphemy - just like cold, sharp-tongue intellectuals choose the side of rationality even at the expense of humanity, and everything illogical seems outdated - or wait, I got a better one - so-called social activists often get so attached to their self-imposed identity of victimhood, that every person with a political, corporate, legal or bureaucratic background seems to appear as devil incarnate. This, my friend, is what I call "half freedom", which by the way, is far worse than the lack of freedom. And even though it manifests as an act of willful choice, when you get down to it, it's just plain old rigidity. And if we want to build a truly just, inclusive and progressive society, this hypocritical half-freedom won't do - what's needed is whole freedom - a kind of freedom that liberates the mind of all superstition as well as ignorant suspiciousness. It's time we realize, yelling about justice without using common sense is just as useless as keeping quiet. What this means is that, we gotta come together regardless of our background - the teacher, the scientist, the student, the copper, the politician, the civil servant, the entrepreneur, the economist, the janitor, the construction worker - every single person from every single walk of life must come forward surpassing all suspicious conspiracy, and contribute the best of their capacity in the making of a real civilized world.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“All constitutions are mere books,
All scriptures are mere books,
Even my books are mere books.
Nothing is above scrutiny,
Nothing is infallible.
Till you get this simple fact,
No society is reparable.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“GOD means Guts On Duty.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“For every existence wasted in unexistence,
Civilization is set back a hundred years.
Object of existence is the unfolding of life,
Not the worship of spiritless structures.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yarasistan: My Wounds, My Crown

“Some people hate pigs,
Some people love pigs,
Some people behave like pigs.
Some people worship cows,
Some people feast on cows,
Some people just act like cows.

Eat what you like,
Believe what you like.
As long as you don't
behave like pigs and cows,
let no tradition be your guide.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“Those who whisper freedom to your ears are the greatest threats to your existence.”
― Eduvie Donald

“Conscience is my constitution,
Compassion is my culture,
Character is my government.
I don't need any second hand
constitution, second hand culture,
second hand government.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“In a world that rewards
second-hand existence,
Stand alone and original,
as a first-hand sapiens.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat

“De som styr har inte det mod som krävs, och jag hör dig säga att man måste ha vuxit upp som jag, i städer där man kan tänka allt och säga allt utan att frukta något, för att kunna avstå från att ta risker.”
― Marc Levy, All Those Things We Never Said

“Hur skulle jag kunna hålla kvar dig, du som saknat friheten så mycket?”
― Marc Levy, All Those Things We Never Said

“More than being the spark of reason,
Be the reason for someone's spark.
Better than bearing the light of faith,
Instill faith in someone's light.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“Tradition divides, tradition unites;
Choose carefully the tradition you live.
Not all traditions imposed on you are good,
You gotta use conscience to pick and mix.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“A consensus by itself is meaningless. It was once the consensus that the earth was flat, that the sun orbited the stationary earth, that the Catholic Church was the source of all Truth, that Jesus Christ was God, and that classical physics was almost perfect, bar a fee minor details. All great advances have come about by overturning the consensus. That’s actually the definition of a great advance! To say that no one should be allowed to challenge or doubt the consensus is just about the most serious anti-science statement that anyone can make. That’s turning science into religion, a faith that no one is allowed to question!
It’s a simple fact that no matter what the scientific consensus is – and science has been wrong about countless things in its history, and even defines itself according to the principles that all of its claims must be capable of falsification or verification, hence it always places a doubt over itself – the consensus can be completely misguided and mistaken. The dogmatic assertion that it is wrong to spread “doubt and confusion” after “a scientific consensus had been reached” is simply chilling. This is the quintessence of the paradigmatic, blinkered scientific thinking attacked by Thomas Kuhn.”
― Mike Hockney, The Sam Harris Delusion

“A cup is just crockery
till there is coffee in it.
A head is just a skull
till there's a mind in it.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“Prejudice is sense of the caves, reason is sense of civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets