Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against when it is drowned in ignorance.
William E. Channing

Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.
Edwin Hubbell Chapin

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.
G. K. Chesterton

The job of the evangelist is never easy.
Ben Chifley (Prime Minister of Australia, 1945-49)

Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Winston Churchill

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Winston Churchill

For, to speak truly, that superstition has extended itself through all nations, and has oppressed the intellectual energies of all men, and has betrayed them into endless imbecilities.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

When you have no basis of argument, abuse the plaintiff.
Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C Clarke

It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
W.K. Clifford

A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that he is going to be a beginner all his life.
Robin G. Collingwood

Learning without thinking is useless. Thinking without learning is dangerous.
Confucius

Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.
Michael Crichton

I suffered from chronic hypochondria for years. Eventually I went to a naturopath and was cured with a course of broad-spectrum placebos.
M. Cullen

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.
Marie Curie

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.
Marie Curie

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.
No, not Thomas Jefferson - it was John Philpot Curran

The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition.
Quintus Curtius Rufus

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Dalai Lama

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.
Clarence Darrow

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutory pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path toward errors is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened.
Charles Darwin

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge; it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
Charles Darwin

I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved by me, as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it.
Charles Darwin

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
Robertson Davies

Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.
Richard Dawkins

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.
Richard Dawkins

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.
Richard Dawkins

Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world.
Richard Dawkins

I am a philosopher, not a scientist, and we philosophers are better at questions than answers.
Daniel Dennett

There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view I hold dear.
Daniel Dennett

I can doubt everything, except one thing, and that is the very fact that I doubt.
René Descartes

Minds are like parachutes. They only function when open.
Scottish distiller Thomas Dewar

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
John Dewey

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Philip K Dick

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see -
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency.
Emily Dickinson

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.
Emily Dickinson

Skepticism is the first step toward truth.
Denis Diderot

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.
Denis Diderot

A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.
Denis Diderot

Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: "My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly." This stranger is a theologian.
Denis Diderot

Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.
Denis Diderot

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Denis Diderot

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that dares not reason is a slave.
William Drummond

[Science is] a series of judgements, revised without ceasing.
Pierre Emile Duclaux

If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity.
Umberto Eco

Credulity is belief in slight evidence, with no evidence, or against evidence.
Tryon Edwards

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein

Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.
Albert Einstein