Inspirational Words of Famous Freethinkers

Don't fall in a faint, but we don't need religion for inspiration, nor the supernatural to be spiritual.  Why should we? Inspiration and spirit both derive from the Anglo Saxon inspiren and old Latin inspīrāre, simply meaning, "to breathe." Right at the start it was a metaphor for life itself, the quality of being more than rocks and trees. We breathe, rocks don't. What can be more natural than that?

Even today the secular meaning lingers: team spirit, college spirit, the Spirit of '76. But over centuries religion has co-opted or hijacked the words until most of us assume they mean something supernatural by default, something magical, beyond the world. We say, not so.

Because the world is everything, and everything can be inspiration enough for us all.

We wish to highlight the inspiring, the spiritual thought and work of three great freethinkers. This barely touches the surface. Freethought has a rich spiritual history. Visit the links, then to learn more, see the Celebrity Atheists List or Jim Walker's List.  Happy exploring!
 

Robert G. Ingersoll was a fearless agnostic, great orator, prominent progressive and freethinker, and a prolific author of the 19th century. [The Complete Works of Ingersoll]  [The Robert Ingersoll Museum]

Clarence Darrow: How does one begin to explain this paradox, this sophisticated country lawyer, this hedonistic defender of the poor and downtrodden, this honest, devious man? [Clarence Darrow at the Sacred Texts Archive]  [Quotes]

Mark Twain: The most famous of American authors during his life, and an outspoken critic of religion and human folly. [Mark Twain at the Sacred Texts Archive]  [Twainquotes]