Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [341-360] of 371 Free Thought quotesFree Thought QuotesFree Thought Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes It is the rare fortune of these days that one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.~ Cornelius Tacitus Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.~ Tecumseh When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?~ Henry David Thoreau I know that most men -- not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems -- can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty -- conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives.~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking; where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than useless.~ Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the blood of real civilization.~ G. M. Trevelyan I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.~ Mark Twain Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.~ Mark Twain It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.~ Mark Twain Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.~ Mark Twain The essential support and encouragement comes from within, arising out of the mad notion that your society needs to know what only you can tell it.~ John Updike The world acquires value only through its extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent.~ Paul Valéry Liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations.~ Paul Valéry Just as there is a very short distance between the U.S. and Cuba, there is a very short distance between a democracy and a dictatorship where the government gets to decide what to do, how to think, and how to live. And sometimes your freedom is not taken away at gunpoint, but instead it is done one piece of paper at a time, one seemingly meaningless rule at a time, one small silencing at a time. Never allow the government – or anyone else – to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do or not do.~ Armando Valladares An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure.~ Mark Van Doren Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others to persecute those who do reason.~ Voltaire Liberty is not and cannot be anything but the power of doing what we will.~ Voltaire The first thing a genius needs is to breath free air.~ Ludwig Von Mises Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought.~ Ludwig von Mises Those who call themselves "liberals" today are asking for policies which are precisely the opposite of those policies which the liberals of the nineteenth century advocated in their liberal programs. The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial -- that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions.~ Ludwig von Mises Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print