Great Freethinking Quotes

[Scepcop]

Here is a list of inspirational quotes from Darryl Sloan's blog.

http://darrylsloan.wordpress.com/inspiration/

Inspirational quotes:

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

“One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.”
— Bertrand Russell

“I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.”
— Rita Mae Brown

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti

“If you don’t take responsibility for programming yourself, then someone else will.”
— Paul McKenna, The Hypnotic World of Paul McKenna

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
— Bertrand Russell

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
— Mark Twain

“Science of today – the superstition of tomorrow. Science of tomorrow – the superstition of today.”
— Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future

“Magic is never totally scientifically explainable, but science has always been, at one time or another, considered magic.”
— Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible

“Those who throw out these results will not be scientists, but merely another set of dogmatists — of whom new crops are continually springing up, wearing new disguises and new labels. The plain truth is that in science, as in politics and religion, it is a lot easier to believe what you have been taught, than to set out for yourself and ascertain what happens.”
— Upton Sinclair, Mental Radio

“The more we look into what we think we know, the more hitherto undetected things we shall find lurking in our assumptions.”
— H.G. Wells, The New World Order

“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology, you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that … That is why people are always searching for meaning to life … Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”
— Anthony de Mello

“There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all yours days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don’t help them by doing the job yourself.”
— Laurell K. Hamilton

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
— Albert Camus

“There is a beast in man that needs to be exercised, not exorcised.”
— Anton Szandor LaVey

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
— Edmund Burke

“Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.”
— Anthony de Mello

[Scepcop]

Here is a list of freethinking quotes I put together.

Great Quotes about the Insanity of Society and the Sanity of the Dissident

Most people assume that the majority is right, that society is normal and sane, and that the misfit, dissident, loner or nonconformist is abnormal and possibly mentally ill. That’s what they are programmed and conditioned to believe. It is a classic “cattle control” method of getting the herd to keep itself in line. However, many great thinkers, intellectuals and writers throughout history have said the opposite. See these quotes from them below.


“The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” - Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." - H. L. Mencken

“Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” - Gandhi

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." - Friederich Nietzsche

"Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world." - R. D. Lang

"Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools, and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion." - Thornton Wilder

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." - Friederich Nietzsche

"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone." - Ayn Rand

"The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic." - Eric Fromm, Swiss Psychologist (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)

The “Parable of the Poisoned Well” illustrates what Fromm described very well:

“There was once a wise king who ruled over a vast city. He was feared for his might and loved for his wisdom. Now in the heart of the city, there was a well whose waters were pure and crystalline from which the king and all the inhabitants drank. When all were asleep, an enemy entered the city and poured seven drops of a strange liquid into the well. And he said that henceforth all who drink this water shall become mad.

All the people drank of the water, but not the king. And the people began to say, "The king is mad and has lost his reason. Look how strangely he behaves. We cannot be ruled by a madman, so he must be dethroned."

The king grew very fearful, for his subjects were preparing to rise against him. So one evening, he ordered a golden goblet to be filled from the well, and he drank deeply. The next day, there was great rejoicing among the people, for their beloved king had finally regained his reason."


Likewise: "A time will come when the whole world will go mad. And to anyone who is not mad they will say: 'You are mad, for you are not like us.'" - St. Anthony the Great (attributed to)

"Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religion destroys spirituality." - Michael Ellner

Dogbert: "Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane." - Scott Adams, Dilbert

"We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself. For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal." - Carl Bernstein, U.S. Journalist. Guardian (London, June 3, 1992)

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." - Oscar Wilde

"Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue..." - Billy Joel, in his hit song Honesty

"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage." - Ray Bradbury

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe." - Johann von Goethe

"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akiro Kurosawa

"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" - Ursula K. LeGuin (b. 1929), US author, The Princess

"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives... I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends... and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it." - John Lennon, Interview BBC-TV (June 22, 1968)

"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 inevitably 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 even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are." - H.L. Mencken

"In America, the criminally insane rule and the rest of us, or the vast majority of the rest of us, either do not care, do not know, or are distracted and properly brainwashed into acquiescence." - Kurt Nimmo

"America is an insane asylum run by the inmates." - Lester Roloff (1914-1982)

"When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), British playwright

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you." - Rita Mae Brown

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." - Lily Tomlin (1939 - ), Actress

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire

"Sometimes I think that the greatest sign that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe is that it hasn't tried to contact us yet." - Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

[ProfWag]

Here's something to make us Americans "think." Check out the cover of this week's Time Magazine (clue, note the difference between the U.S. and the rest of the world's...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/europ ... 05,00.html

[Craig Browning]

[ProfWag]

[sarahglen890]

These are great quotes. Sometimes when you hear a quote like this, it inspires you to do better in life. I have a desktop rotating quote widget that helps me see different quotes each day. Thanks for the information.

[alexa1994]

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
— Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future

liked this quote.

[misstwister]

I like this one:
Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes... just be an illusion.
Javan

[Ayurvedaa]

A man never gets defeated until he admits it. This quote is my fav

[krismartinI]

the best one is "Everything is fair in love and war"