All Quotes By Tag: Indoctrination

“We all know that any emotional bias — irrespective of truth or falsity — can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value…. If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.”

“I wouldn’t give 2 cents for all the fancy principles, doctrines, philosophies, sciences and institutions in the world, if behind them they didn’t have plain ordinary everyday conscience guiding them in the right direction.”

“We may not yet know the right way to go, but we should at least stop going in the wrong direction.”

“If you can convince people that freedom is injustice, they will then believe that slavery is freedom.”

“When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is ‘being offended’.”

“Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”