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Liberty Quotes

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Liberty Quotes

“If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay.”

Ifs World Liberty Subjects This World Intellectual Understood Worthy Clay

Book:The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll...

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll...

“Along with Islam and Christianity, Judaism does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing.”

Thinking Humans Doe Sometimes Facts Evil Liberty Christianity Written Atheism Conditions Intellectual Mad Islam Word Of God Indispensable Judaism Contradictory Realisation

Book:Letters to a Young Contrarian

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Intellectual liberty [is] the right to think right and the right to think wrong. Thought is the means by which we endeavor to arrive at truth.”

Thinking Mean Liberty Intellectual Independence Endeavor

Book:The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“God, or rather the fiction of God, is thus the sanction and the intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery on earth, and the liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master.”

Men Earth Causes Fiction Liberty Moral Atheism Masters Intellectual Slavery Positive Atheism Heavenly Sanctions

Author:Mikhail Bakunin

“Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations.”

“The church in all ages and among all peoples has been the consistent enemy of the human race. Everywhere and at all times, it has opposed the liberty of thought and expression. It has been the sworn enemy of investigation and intellectual development. It has denied the existence of facts, the tendency of which was to undermine its power. It has always been carrying fagots to the feet of Philosophy. It has erected the gallows for Genius. It has built the dungeon for Thinkers.”

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil.”

Source: The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections

“[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.”

“Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite.”

Men Mind Individual Felt Perfect Liberty Approach Worship Intellectual Infinite Variety Indian Unlimited Temperament Affinity Sri Lanka

Author:Sri Aurobindo

“The good of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means, of all government. The government of the supreme and all-perfect Mind, over all his intellectual creation, is by proportioning rewards to piety and virtue, and punishments to disobedience and vice. ... The joys of heaven are prepared, and the horrors of hell in a future state, to render the moral government of the universe perfect and complete. Human government is more or less perfect, as it approaches nearer or diverges further from an imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government.”

“What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked upon as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty becasue they have no intellect.”

Matter Liberty Opinion Mass Intellectual Intellect Granted Indifference Ignorance In 1984

Author:George Orwell

“The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background.”

Trying Liberty Enemy Cases Issues Discipline Intellectual Backgrounds Individualism Versus Untruth

Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: I belong to the Left: 1945

Source: The Complete Works of George Orwell: I belong to the Left: 1945