Quotes

See also a list of Quote Authors, and of Quote Tags.

  • I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. – Voltaire

  • All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality — the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape. – Arthur C. Benson

  • Dissidents should be paid 13 months’ salary for a year, otherwise our mindless unanimity will bring us to an even more hopeless state of stagnation. It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must…

  • Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the truly…

  • Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. – Bertrand Russell

  • I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. – Galileo

  • Minds are like parachutes, they only function when opened. – Unknown

  • A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

  • People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. – Soren Kierkegaard

  • Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than…

  • Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd. – Edith…

  • If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? – William Shakespeare