Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. — Martin Luther King
To see what is in front of one’s nose is a constant struggle. — George Orwell
Reality isn't the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are — Robert Ringer
Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it. — George Monbiot
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. — Voltaire
To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
If you are going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh. Otherwise they’ll kill you. — George Bernard Shaw
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. — Noam Chomsky
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. — Søren Kierkegaard
A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything. — Napoleon Bonaparte
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. — Attributed to Edmund Burke
The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. — Tommy Smothers
The truth is, when people talk about problems out loud, they don’t cause them, they simply expose them. — David Johnson, Jeff VanVonderen
Let’s not play the game, let’s change it. — Margaret Heffernan
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. — Marianne Williamson
No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance. — Alan Bullock
Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters. — Isaac Bashevis Singer
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. — John Stuart Mill
The God content of the past no longer sustains the contemporary spirit. We sense that our only hope is to journey past those definitions of a God who is external, supernatural, and invasive, which previously defined our belief. We must discover whether or not the death of the God we worshiped yesterday is the same thing as the death of God. — John Shelby Spong
The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. — Henry Steele Commager
Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. — Potter Stewart
The test of democracy is freedom of criticism. — David Ben-Gurion
Doubt is the father of invention. — Galileo Galilei
The great Hasidic Rabbi Susya said, When I get to heaven they will not ask me, Why were you not Moses? Instead they will ask, why were you not Susya?
Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict. — Saul Alinsky
When you see people in a religious system being secretive — watch out. People don’t hide what is appropriate; they hide what is inappropriate. — David Johnson, Jeff VanVonderen
Faith is a belief in something that is not proved. — Nature of Reality Group
The Gods only laugh when men pray to them for wealth. — Japanese proverb
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. — Voltaire
There are perhaps many who would still retain the notion of a quasi-anthropomorphic Father-God as an extra-mental reality, even though the purely mental origin of such a God has become apparent. — Dr. J.C. Flügel
If my friends lack an eye, I look at them in profile. — Joseph Joubert
The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates
Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous. — Voltaire
An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t. — Anatole France
Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult. — Charlotte Whitton
All direction of public humour and opinion must originate in a few. Perhaps a good deal of that humour and opinion must be owing to such direction. Events supply materials: times furnish dispositions; but conduct alone can bring them to any useful purpose. I never yet knew an instance of any general temper in the nation, that might not have been tolerably well traced to some particular persons. If things are left to themselves, it is my clear opinion that a nation may slide down fair and softly from the highest point of grandeur and prosperity to the lowest state of imbecility and meanness, without anyone's marking a particular period in the declension, without asking a question about it, or in the least speculating on any of the innumerable acts which have stolen in this silent and insensible revolution. Every event so prepares the subsequent, that, when it arrives, it produces no surprise, nor any extraordinary alarm. — Edmund Burke