Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [61-80] of 103 Agnostic quotesAgnostic QuotesAgnostic Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual freedom. The witch-hunt was not, however, a mere repression. It was also, and as importantly, a long overdue opportunity for everyone so inclined to express publicly his guilt and sins, under the cover of accusations against the victims.~ Arthur Miller Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.~ Ashley Montague When it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.~ John Viscount Morley Zealotry of either kind -- the puritan's need to regiment others or the victim's passion for blaming everyone except himself -- tends to produce a depressing civic stupidity. Each trait has about it the immobility of addiction. Victims become addicted to being victims: they derive identity, innocence and a kind of devious power from sheer, defaulting helplessness. On the other side, the candlesnuffers of behavioral and political correctness enact their paradox, accomplishing intolerance in the name of tolerance, regimentation in the name of betterment.~ Lance Morrow In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.~ Friedrich Nietzsche Belief means not wanting to know what is true.~ Friedrich Nietzsche The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 -- to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And that message is clear and concise: Go to Hell.~ P. J. O'Rourke At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is “not done”… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.~ George Orwell I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.~ Thomas Paine Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.~ Thomas Paine Practical religion consists in doing good: and the only way of serving God is that of endeavoring to make His creation happy. All preaching that has not this for its object is nonsense and hypocrisy.~ Thomas Paine Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.~ Thomas Paine All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.~ Thomas Paine Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system.~ Thomas Paine Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.~ Blaise Pascal 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 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 Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.~ Eleanor Roosevelt It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright.~ Murray N. Rothbard In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.~ Bertrand Russell Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print