Free Thinker Quotes

This conversation revealed to Odo a third conception of the religious idea. In Piedmont religion imposed itself as a military discipline, the enforced duty of the Christian citizen to the heavenly state; to the Duke it was a means of purchasing spiritual immunity from the consequences of bodily weakness; to the Bishop, it replaced the panem et circenses of ancient Rome. Where, in all this, was the share of those whom Christ had come to save? Where was Saint Francis's devotion to his heavenly bride, the Lady Poverty? Though here and there a good parish priest like Crescenti ministered to the temporal wants of the peasantry, it was only the free-thinker and the atheist who, at the risk of life and fortune, laboured for their moral liberation. Odo listened with a saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed shade of the gardens, and down ~ Edith Wharton

Be an individual, let out the self that hides away at the expense of others approval. ~ Nikki Rowe

It would much conduce to the public benefit, if, instead of discouraging free-thinking, there was erected in the midst of this free country a dianoetic academy, or seminary for free-thinkers, provided with retired chambers, and galleries, and shady walks and groves, where, after seven years spent in silence and meditation, a man might commence a genuine free-thinker, and from that time forward, have license to think what he pleased, and a badge to distinguish him from counterfeits. ~ George Berkeley

The world is a strange place for humans like me, we don't really belong anywhere but we fit everywhere. We carry a depth, thay most get high to reach - we're busy creating magic whilst half the world is building wars. ~ Nikki Rowe

Freedom of speech is detestable only to those who have no desire to think for themselves. ~ Criss Jami

I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker. ~ Richard Steele

What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem. ~ Bertrand Russell

A free thinker used to be a man who had been educated on ideas of religion, law, morality, and had arrived at free thought by virtue of his own struggle and toil; but now a new type of born freethinker has been appearing, who've never even heard that there have been laws of morality and religion, and that there are authorities, but who simply grow up with negative ideas about everything, that is savages. ~ Leo Tolstoy

It's very important for institutions of concentrated power to keep people alone and isolated: that way they're ineffective, they can't defend themselves against indoctrination, they can't even figure out what they think. ~ Noam Chomsky

Then, what," asked Turnbull, very slowly, as he softly picked a flower, "what is the difference between Christ and Satan?"

"It is quite simple," replied the Highlander. "Christ descended into hell; Satan fell into it."

"Does it make much odds?" asked the free-thinker.

"It makes all the odds," said the other. "One of them wanted to go up and went down; the other wanted to go down and went up. A god can be humble, a devil can only be humbled. ~ G.K. Chesterton

The mob is the most deadly of all critics in that it thinks critically only towards critical thinkers. ~ Criss Jami

I'm bad at doing what I'm told. I'm a born free thinker. ~ Christopher Monckton

The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past. He cares as little for what will be as for what has been; he cares only for what ought to be. And for my present purpose I specially insist on this abstract independence. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Be a free thinker and don't accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in. ~ Aristotle.

Man, free thinker!
Do you imagine you alone think in this world where life is blazing forth in all things?
You are free to avail yourself of the forces you command, but the universe has gone missing from your prescriptions. ~ Gerard De Nerval

I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable ~ Henry Miller

Everyone pretends to be 'free thinkers', but few individuals pass the line into expressive territories that may be detrimental to their own social well-being. ~ Criss Jami

A conspiracy theorist is a critical thinker playing out-of-bounds. ~ Criss Jami

I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control. ~ Alan Bennett

There will always be businesses and companies, trying to make money from you, but that's not the problem. The real problem is that you're feeding the Beast. You're allowing him to run free and overpower your Angel, and that is reflected in your financial life. It's the reason your paycheck comes and goes, and it makes prosperity impossible. ~ Celso Cukierkorn

Savant, doesn't it strike you as somewhat ... hypocritical that we fight to keep humans free from the domination of machines, while at the same time some of our own League Worlds use slaves? ~ Brian Herbert

You;re colling me, So i fugure you must not hate me anymore. dOES THIS MEAN YOU WANNA GO OUT? iI'm free tonight. I mean , I have plans, but i can break them. For you.
Brandon, you kidnapped me. And then you made the only person I'll ever love in my life hate me. I completely despise you.
So ... , I take that as a no, you do not want to go out with me tonight. ~ Meg Cabot

I am very fond of the theatre. If I have only a kopeck in my pocket, I always go there. Most of my fellow-officials are uneducated boors, and never enter a theatre unless one throws free tickets at their head. ~ Nikolai Gogol

The sciences are being held back by assumptions that have hardened into dogmas, maintained by powerful taboos. I believe that the sciences will be regenerated when they are set free. ~ Rupert Sheldrake

To enlarge the sphere of social happiness is worthy of the benevolent design of a Masonic institution; and it is most fervently to be wished, that the conduct of every member of the fraternity, as well as those publications, that discover the principles which actuate them, may tend to convince mankind that the grand object of Masonry is to promote the happiness of the human race.
[Letter to the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, January 1793] ~ George Washington

Government, not the oil industry, is the biggest 'profiteer' from oil. And it uses the tax revenue to expand its own authority at the expense of the individual, as it does with an endless number of other industries - including electric power, coal, lumber, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, aircraft, and agriculture. The Statist's intrusion to the free market is boundless. ~ Mark Levin

If I was a locksmith, I'd be pimping that out man. I'll trade you a free key duplication for. That joke made me laugh before I could finish it, which is good, because it had no ending. ~ Mitch Hedberg

Long before reaching this kind of stability in meditation, however, one can discover that the sense of self - the sense that there is a thinker behind one's thoughts, an experiencer amid the flow of experience - is an illusion. The feeling that we call "I" is itself the product of thought. Having an ego is what it feels like to be thinking without knowing that you are thinking. Consider ~ Sam Harris

Lifestyle Design is thus not interested in creating an excess of idle time, which is poisonous, but the positive use of free time, defined simply as doing what you want as opposed to what you feel obligated to do. ~ Timothy Ferriss

We the people have never agreed on much of anything. ... [D]isunity is the through-line in the national plot. Not necessarily as a failing, but as a free people's privileged. ~ Sarah Vowell

For a free country to continue thriving, there have to be regular reforms, because any society, any economy that stays in place, you're going to see repeated attempts to exploit the openings for twisting policy to the advantage of those who already have wealth and power. ~ Al Gore

From the perspective of the radicals, the habitus basis of human existence is, as a whole, no more than a spiritually worthless puppet theatre into which a free ego-soul must be implanted after the fact, and through the greatest effort. If this fails, one experiences an effect in most people that is familiar from many athletes and models: they make a promising visual impression - but if one knocks, no one is at home. According to these doctrines, the adept can only rid themselves of their baggage by subjecting their life to a rigorous practice regime by which they can de-automize their behaviour in all important dimensions. At the same time, they must re-automatize their newly acquired behaviour so that what they want to be or represent becomes second nature. ~ Peter Sloterdijk

You won't be free from guilt if you are constantly replaying the negative memories of your past. If you're going to replay anything, replay your victories! ~ Joel Osteen

I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind. ~ John G. Diefenbaker

If we even tolerate any oppression of gay and lesbian Americans, if we join those who would intrude upon the choices of our hearts, then who among us shall be free? ~ June Jordan

The truth shall set you free...unless of course you live anywhere w/vengeful, powerful people and/or government - John: First Draft ~ Grea Alexander

... It was dark. There were no dead stars, no rogue planets. Matter itself had long evaporated, burned up by proton decay, leaving nothing but a thin smoke of neutrinos drifting out at lightspeed. But even now there was something rather than nothing. The creatures of this age drifted like clouds, immense, slow, coded in immense wispy atoms. Free energy was dwindling to zero, time stretching to infinity. It took these cloud-beings longer to complete a single thought than it once took species to rise and fall on Earth ... ~ Stephen Baxter

I suspect that democracy is not viable in a technologically advanced society. Free people wield too much ability to destroy. ~ Daniel Suarez

If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently ... As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them."
[Bangor Daily News, Guest Column of March 20, 1992] ~ Stephen King

But nothing's really free, is it? People always make you pay one way or another. ~ Jane Lotter

What I tend to tell my students is, "When you look in the mirror and see a smart, angry girl who wants to be free, you're seeing a paradigm that Kathy [Acker] helped bring into the recognizable." ~ Sarah Schulman

I think I identify more with the smart guy, but most people might take umbrage at that. I like to think of myself as a real thinker, but I suppose people might beg to differ. ~ Colin Quinn

I'd seen it happen, how hard it was to get out. Every year, one or two kids would visit from college for a long October weekend and simply never leave. They came home, cocooned themselves in the familiar radius of the town limits, and never broke free again. Years later, you'd see them working in the kitchen at the pizza place, or sitting at the bar in the East Bank Tavern. Shoulders hunched, jaw set, skin slack. And in the waning light of their eyes, the barest sensation that once upon a time, they been somewhere else ... or maybe it was only a dream. ~ Kat Rosenfield

The only way you feel safe in a relationship is if you feel free to leave it. ~ Barbara Nickless

Rehana regarded the saris and tried to recall the feeling they had given her, of being at once enveloped and set free, the tight revolutions of material around her hips and legs limiting movement, the empty space between blouse and petticoat permitting unexpected sensations -- the thrill of a breeze that has strayed low, through an open window, the knowledge of heat in strange places, the back, the exposed belly. It was the bringing together of night and day.... ~ Tahmima Anam

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy. ~ Herbert Spencer

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it. ~ George Washington

Every subject's duty is the King's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore, should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were no sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive the day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare. ~ William Shakespeare

Think not, O Mortal, vainly gay.
That Thou from Human Woes is free,
The bitter cup I drink today,
Tomorrow may be drunk by thee. ~ Jane Grey

Everyone of my generation who preached free love is responsible for AIDS. ~ Camille Paglia

What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage. ~ Bruce Barton

To go from the vision that we would all be free to express ourselves creatively because our material needs were being met, to this reality where nobody has money, people are unemployed, and the machines are harnessed by the lucky guys who Facebook or Google and we're supposed to be happy just to contribute content to their site. ~ Astra Taylor

Even though the numbers are down with respect to favorability ratings, at every embassy and consular office tomorrow morning that we have, people will be lined up, and they'll all say the same thing, "We want to go to America." So we're still the leader of the world that wants to be free. We are still the inspiration of the rest of the world. And we can come back. ~ Colin Powell

I'm a free-market economist from years and years back, and I've never veered from that. ~ Alan Greenspan

Never treat any person as a means. Treat everybody as an end in himself, in herself - then you don't cling, then you are not attached. You love, but your love gives freedom - and, when you give freedom to the other, you are free. Only in freedom does your soul grow. You will feel very, very happy. ~ Osho