freedom from dogma Quotes

Intellectual freedom is essential -- freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship.

The real man of intelligence will not cling to any ideology - for what? He will not carry a load of readymade answers. He knows that he has enough intelligence so that whatever situation arises, he will be able to respond to it. Why carry an unnecessary load from the past? What is the point of carrying it?

Buddhism strongly discourages blind faith and fanaticism.

To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker.

All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

We crave, we deeply yearn for, release from the limitations of a dogma that declares separation, disunity, and judgment to be the essential condition of life.

It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.

Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.

Fredrick Buechner kind of loosened up my clerical collar, you might say.

When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can't understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.

I have learned from Nature that dependence on unnatural beliefs weakens us in the struggle and shortens our breath for the race.