61 Freethinker Quotes

Following is our list of the most famous freethinker quotations and slogans. We've compiled this selection of inspirational freethinker quotes. Hopefully, these freethinker quotes will keep you motivated not only during hard times but to expand your freethinker knowledge!

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Famous Freethinker Quotes

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think. — George Bernard Shaw

A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing. — Robert Green Ingersoll

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

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next. - Matthew Arnold

The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next. — Matthew Arnold

An independent thinker, regardless of their viewpoint, is an active brain in the room, contributing something original to the system. — Tim Urban

Dare to think for yourself. - Voltaire

Dare to think for yourself. — Voltaire

To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Great minds think for themselves. — Immanuel Kant

Great thoughts are against all doctrines of conformity — Austin Osman Spare

To be free of belief and unbelief is my religion. — Omar Khayyam

Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you. — Henry David Thoreau

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men. — Robert G. Ingersoll

He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave. — Andrew Carnegie

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. - Voltaire

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. — Voltaire

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt. — Bergen Evans

Short Freethinker Quotes

  • The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved. — Jack Kerouac
  • Because the only people for me are the mad ones. — Jack Kerouac
  • Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all. — Laurence Sterne
  • The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve. — Albert Einstein
  • Freethinkers are occasionally thoughtful, though never free. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
  • My ancestors were Freethinkers - and that's what I am, except we're called secular humanists now. — Kurt Vonnegut
  • A lawyer's brief will be brief, before a freethinker thinks freely. — Augustus William Hare
  • I don't think I represent some new category. I think I do represent kind of a freethinker. — Marianne Williamson
  • By the time I was sixteen I had read many books and I had become a freethinker. — Cormac McCarthy

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Robert Green Ingersoll
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Read quotes by Voltaire

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Read quotes by Jack Kerouac

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Read quotes by Aristotle

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More Freethinker Quotes

What I was utterly convinced of, and still am, is the idea that the only responsibility the free intellectual has is vis-a-vis himself. He is not responsible to either a political party or a ruler. — Tawfiq al-Hakim

Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. — Albert Einstein

The freethinker has the same right to discredit the beliefs of Christians that the Orthodox Christians enjoy in destroying reverence, respect, and confidence in Mohammedanism, Mormonism, Christian Science, or Atheism. — Theodore Schroeder

Freethinkers reject faith as a valid tool of knowledge. Faith is the opposite of reason because reason imposes very strict limits on what can be true, and faith has no limits at all. A Great Escape into faith is no retreat to safety. It is nothing less than surrender. — Dan Barker

In view of the tide of religiosity engulfing a once secular republic it is refreshing to be reminded by Freethinkers that free thought and skepticism are robustly in the American tradition. After all the Founding Fathers began by omitting God from the American Constitution. — Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge. — Mikhail Bakunin

The authoritarian sets up some book, or man, or tradition to establish the truth. The freethinker sets up reason and private judgment to discover the truth... It takes the highest courage to utter unpopular truths. — Herbert Spencer

Every true Freethinker accords to each individual the right to mental freedom. Where this freedom leads is no concern of others so long as it encroaches not upon their rights. — Etta Semple

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

Earnest Freethinkers need not worry themselves so much about the persecutions of the past. Before the Liberal idea is dead or triumphant we shall see wars and persecutions the like of which the world has never seen. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers. — Bertrand Russell

What a state of society is this in which freethinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as sin? — William Winwood Reade

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. — Carl Sagan

This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. . . . In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine. — Christopher Hitchens

People stopped calling themselves Freethinkers because it was so specifically German and anything German was terribly unpopular because of the two world wars. My family became Unitarians instead - it's the same sort of thing. — Kurt Vonnegut

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... — Leo Tolstoy

My ancestors were all Freethinkers, formerly Catholics. It was science and Darwin, in particular, that made them decide, as educated people, which they were, that the priest, nice as he was, didn't know what he was talking about. — Kurt Vonnegut

I would encourage the youth to get in to their bodies as much as possible through sport or exercise, and to embrace their uniques expressions as individuals and freethinkers. They are lucky enough to grow up in a time where the individual is celebrated - it is their duty to find their voices so that they can be heard. It is time to practice compassionate communication. — Leilani Bishop

I am an atheist. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If "atheist" means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am. But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like - humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic. — Michael Shermer

When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist, or an idealist; a Christian, or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. — Thomas Huxley

And so [my brother] Gilbert and I, brought up without a formal religion, remained throughout our lifetimes just what Father was, freethinkers. And, likewise, doubters and dissenters and perhaps Utopians. Father's rule had been 'Question everything, take nothing for granted,' and I never outlived it, and I would suggest it be made the motto of a world journalists' association. — George Seldes

It took me years, but letting go of religion has been the most profound wake up of my life. I feel I now look at the world not as a child, but as an adult. I see what's bad and it's really bad. But I also see what is beautiful, what is wonderful. And I feel so deeply appreciative that I am alive. How dare the religious use the term 'born again.' That truly describes freethinkers who've thrown off the shackles of religion so much better! — Julia Sweeney

By freethinking I mean the use of the understanding in endeavoring to find out the meaning of any proposition whatsoever, in considering the nature of the evidence for or against, and in judging of it according to the seeming force or weakness of the evidence. — Anthony Collins

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

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