"Freethinking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the controversial habits of the clergy, those of their skeptical opponents were still worse. That was surely a strange state of things where such freethinking as the "Age of Reason" could win a wide circulation and considerable credit. But it was not merely the vulgar among freethinkers who then substituted sophistry and declamation for honesty and sense. The philosophers ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... blaze out in stirring speech and vigorous action. His intellectual training was limited. He had, we are told, been much influenced in his youth by the French philosophers of the time, and had appeared on the side of the more freethinking party in the famous Leslie controversy. Soon afterwards, however, he was converted to 'evangelical' views. He still accepted Thomas Brown as a great metaphysician,[399] but thought that in moral questions Brown's deistical optimism required to be corrected ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... critical dictionary a pleasant tale, or obscene jest, and a grave argument against the Christian religion, a witty confutation of some absurd author, and an artful sophism to impeach some respectable truth, was particularly commodious to all our young smarts and smatterers in freethinking. But what mischief have you not done to human society! You have endeavoured, and with some degree of success, to shake those foundations on which the whole moral world and the great fabric of social happiness ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... controversial habits of the clergy, those of their skeptical opponents were still worse. That was surely a strange state of things where such freethinking as the "Age of Reason" could win a wide circulation and considerable credit. But it was not merely the vulgar among freethinkers who then substituted sophistry and declamation for honesty and sense. The philosophers of the Institute caught the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various |
