If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission.
I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.
Men are free when they are obeying some deep, inward voice of religious belief. Obeying from within. Men are free when they belong to a living, organic, believing community, active in fulfilling some unfulfilled, perhaps unrealized purpose. Not when they are escaping to some wild west. The most unfree souls go west, and shout of freedom.
Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.
It is possible I can make very little of myself; but this little is everything, and better than what I allow to be made out of me by the might of others, by the training of custom, religion, the laws, the State.
I’m an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation.
Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.
Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.
I love the freedom of my wings. I love the empty space above the ground. I rejoice in my freedom. Freedom is my religion. Peace is my God. Love is my worship.
Freedom of religion is not enough; we need the extinction of it, because no one has turned to be a religious by their own choice.
To me, my husband was my son’s murderer. He was also my daughter’s molester. A parasite nibbling on the Holy Book, he was Lucifer, holding me by the throat and driving me to sin every night. He was Bhai’s destroyer, Amma Sain’s tormentor, Ma’s humbler and the people’s exploiter. He was the rapist of orphans and the fiend that fed on the weak. But over and above all this, he was known to be the man closest to Allah, the one who could reach Him and save us.
I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusion about freedom plague them both.
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.... During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
[I]m Hain des Tempels und im Schatten der Zitadelle habe ich die Freiesten unter euch ihre Freiheit als Joch und Handschellen tragen sehen.
It takes a certain amount of intelligence, and bravery, to live your life without someone constantly telling you how to live it.
It is for the very reason that we cannot control other people and that they may be very different to us that something alive and interesting may happen in life.
All great men have been rebels. All great men were free. It is the only formula for greatness. To be stuck in the state of adolescence.
-But what other people will …? - Screw other people, screw what they think or have to say about the way you choose to live. Screw what they expect you to be, screw their rules and screw their set of wrongs and rights too. You do not get it dear, but all what other people do is shattering you into pieces, they take what suits their perspectives or needs and they’ll leave the rest of you as if it’s something never worth it. No one knows you whole but yourself and the only one whom you should give a damn about is yourself…
Give up your fear of death and no power will have authority over your life.
To be successful, one has to be one of three bees - the queen bee, the hardest working bee, or the bee that does not fit in.
