Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [221-240] of 371 Free Thought quotesFree Thought QuotesFree Thought Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Whilst we assert a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to choose minds who have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.~ James Madison Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.~ Maurice Maeterlinck It is impossible for ideas to compete in the marketplace if no forum for their presentation is provided or available.~ Thomas Mann If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.~ Justice Thurgood Marshall It is the trivial, the irrelevant, the sensational, the appeal to obsolete bigotry which naturally give it greatest publicity. In such publicity it becomes a mere vulgar caricature of itself.~ Everett Dean Martin The educator aims at a slow process of development; the propagandist, at quick results. The educator tries to tell people how to think; the propagandist, what to think. The educator strives to develop individual responsibility; the propagandist, mass effects. The educator wants thinking; the propagandist, action. The educator fails unless he achieves an open mind; the propagandist, unless he achieves a closed mind.~ Everett Dean Martin One of the serious results of propaganda is that it has caused the public to think that education and propaganda are the same thing, and thus to make an ignorant multitude believe it is being educated when it is only being manipulated. Education aims at independence of judgement. Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for the unthinking herd.~ Everett Dean Martin Human freedom involves the capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.~ Rollo May The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.~ H. L. Mencken The psychologists and the metaphysicians wrangle endlessly over the nature of the thinking process in man, but no matter how violently they differ otherwise they all agree that it has little to do with logic and is not much conditioned by overt facts.~ H. L. Mencken The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.~ H. L. Mencken All I ask is equal freedom. When it is denied, as it always is, I take it anyhow.~ H. L. Mencken Debate, it seems to me, is one of the most useful of human inventions. It is the mother and father of all free inquiry and honest thought. It tests ideas, detects errors and promotes clear thinking. A man cannot stand up before it without exposing his whole intellectual stock of goods.~ H. L. Mencken I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.~ H. L. Mencken The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to prevailing superstition or taboo.~ H. L. Mencken The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest form from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift of law there is a far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a natural philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.~ H. L. Mencken No one ever heard of the truth being enforced by law. When the secular is called in to sustain an idea, whether new or old, it is always a bad idea, and not infrequently it is downright idiotic.~ H. L. Mencken The ideal type of the Communist is a man in whom all individual, emotional, and unconscious elements have been reduced to a minimum and subjected to the control of an iron will, informed by a supple intellect. That intellect is totally at the service of a single and compelling idea, made incarnate in the Communist Party: the concept of History as an inexorable god whose ways are revealed ‘scientifically’ through the doctrine and method of Marxism-Leninism.~ Frank Straus Meyer If all mankind minus one were of one opinion and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that person that he, if he had the power, would be in silencing mankind… If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.~ John Stuart Mill There is never any fair and thorough discussion of heretical opinions... The greatest harm done is to those who are not heretics, and whose whole mental development is cramped and their reason cowed, by the fear of heresy.~ John Stuart Mill Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print