Freethinking Quotes

“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, Contact

“Some cry out against the majority's despotism that knocks them off their feet and hacks into their fundamental values. Since the unbearable intrusion on their lifestyle's quality frightens them, they are obsessed with losing their integrity through the backlash of an overpowering "democratorship." Spearheading a reconciliation between freethinking and mediation is of supreme importance because mere resentment can be an evil counselor. ("What after bowling alone?" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Isn't this enough? Just this world? Just THIS?”
― Tim Minchin

“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, Children of the Mind

“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

“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, Oeuvres (Les grands classiques Gauthier-Villars)

“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, The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings

“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

“A grim pattern is visible in history: When religion is the ruling force in a society, it produces horror. The stronger the supernatural beliefs, the worse the inhumanity. A culture dominated by intense faith invariably is cruel to people who don't share the faith--and sometimes to many who do.”
― James A. Haught, Holy Horrors: An Illustrated History of Religious Murder and Madness

“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

“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, Anna Karenina

“The number of gurus, yogis, swamis and psychics in a country increases exponentially with the fall of reason, and the fall of reason leads to the fall of civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“Take that old sales pitch from Apple computers. 'Think different.' It's a nice sentiment for children, but what happens in real life? You come back proudly holding up what you found, but then people cover their eyes and scream, 'No, no! We didn't really mean for you to think different!' The truth is, if you just want to be weird on the surface, that's fine. They'll pay you handsomely as long as you go with the flow. But don't call the plan into question, otherwise they have to rewrite everything.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Core

“We must dismantle the frame in order to see the full picture.”
― Jacqueline Simon Gunn

“When enough people possess the same belief, that belief automatically turns into an irrefutable truth in the eyes of the people, even if that belief happens to be the most atrocious lie of all times.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Every Generation Needs Caretakers: The Gospel of Patriotism

“In my opinion, there are only two types of truly empowered people: freethinkers and the ones in power".”
― Rodolfo Peon

“Fight for the alive future, not for a dead past.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hurricane Humans: Give me accountability, I'll give you peace

“We cannot solve the problems that our ancestors couldn't by thinking and acting like them - and more importantly, we cannot solve the problems that our ancestors created by thinking and acting like them - we must think original and act out of that originality.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“Sometimes my mind travels so far ahead that my body can barely keep up.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Ain't Enough to Look Human

“Curiosity kills prejudice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Boldly Comes Justice: Sentient Not Silent

“We are new humans, there's nothing we cannot do.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sleepless for Society

“The very condition of life is expansion.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“New Melody (The Sonnet)

What is this new melody,
That I hear on my guitar!
What is this new tune,
That makes squabbles disappear!
What is this new serenade,
Calling upon a headstrong wind!
Whose are the footsteps I hear,
With such vigor yet gentle and kind!
Amidst the cacophony of cockiness,
What is this heartbeat of sacrifice!
Amidst the drumbeats of individualism,
What is this new desire to universalize!
What is this new voice of sanity I hear!
It is you and me, the branded blasphemer.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Earthquakin' Egalitarian: I Die Everyday So Your Children Can Live

“Expansion makes the human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Insan: When The World is Family

“Better a marvelheaded idiot than a marbleheaded bigot.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Unfold your today beyond your yesterday, or else, there'll be no tomorrow, only decay.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Disown your ancestor before you disown your humanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Reformist or Terrorist: If You Are Terror I Am Your Grandfather

“You mustn't take anybody's words too literally,
not even mine. Look at what literalism has done
to the fundamentalists. I don’t want you to make
the same mistake as them. And more
importantly, I don’t want to be the cause of the
horrors brought along by such mistake.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“Conscience is my constitution, courage is my law. Compassion is my religion, thus speaks the living Ra.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“Let some breeze come in your mind my friend, and the world outside will have all the breeze it needs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşkanjali: The Sufi Sermon