Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [261-280] of 371 Free Thought quotesFree Thought QuotesFree Thought Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.~ Thomas Paine When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.~ Thomas Paine Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not yet sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides.~ Thomas Paine Thoughts are free and are subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature.~ Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.~ Boris Pasternak A tax supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.~ Isabel Paterson All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf -- that book I abhor -- then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.~ Katherine Patterson Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what you want them to achieve, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.~ General George S. Patton, Jr. To know the world one must construct it.~ Cesare Pavese No matter whose lips that would speak, they must be free and ungagged. The community which dares not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can’t stand discussion, let it crack.~ Wendell Phillips One Galileo in two thousand years is enough.~ Pope Pius XII The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.~ Plato There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions… It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.~ Sir Karl Popper You are not what you think you are; What you think – you are.~ Red Pritchard Observation, and not old age, brings wisdom.~ Proverb There is no inherent misdirection in holding unorthodox views. Indeed, the autonomous individual, free from compulsive conformance and unquestioned assumptions, is likely to be unorthodox... They stimulate the climate of controversy without which political democracy becomes an empty formalism.~ Snell Putney Most new insights come only after a superabundant accumulation of facts have removed the blindness which prevented us from seeing what later comes to be regarded as obvious.~ Isidor Issac Rabi Heresy hunters are intolerant not only of unorthodox ideas; worse than that, they are intolerant of ideas -- of any ideas which are really alive and not empty cocoons.~ Philip Lee Ralph Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it -- that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life.~ Ayn Rand A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.~ Ayn Rand Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print