Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

The most all penetrating spirit before which will open the possibility of tilting not tables, but planets, is the spirit of free human inquiry. Believe only in that.

For science must breathe the oxygen of freedom.

Dissent is the mark of freedom, as originality is the mark of independence of mind. … No one can be a scientist … if he does not have independence of observation and of thought.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book and creed and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free.

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

It is a very great thing to be able to think as you like; but, after all, an important question remains: what you think.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.

Our forefathers found the evils of free thinking more to be endured than the evils of inquest or suppression. This is because thoughtful, bold and independent minds are essential to the wise and considered self-government.

No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated…. it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race

Reason like science, grows by way of mutual criticism; the only possible way of planning its growth is to develop those institutions that safeguard. the freedom of thought

It is clear that while science provides insights into the complexity of the world around us, those insights...present a fractured mosaic rather than a seamless whole. There are profound limits to science that must be recognized if we are to minimize the destructive consequences of using the powers provided by scientific discovery.

Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.

Philosophy is empty if it isn't based on science. Science discovers, philosophy interprets.

Take away the ability of an intelligent, principled, hard-working mind to get it wrong, and you take away the whole thing.

The struggle for a free intelligence has always been a struggle between the ironic and the literal mind.

It is necessary for the very existence of science that minds exist which do not allow that nature must satisfy some preconceived conditions.

We cannot have a society half slave and half free; nor can we have thought half slave and half free. If we create an atmosphere in which men fear to think independently, inquire fearlessly, express themselves freely, we will in the end create the kind of society in which men no longer care to think independently or to inquire fearlessly.

Freedom, the first-born of science.

The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance

The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable.

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.

Our civilization ... is not devaluing its awareness of the unknowable; nor is it deifying it. It is the first civilization that has severed it from religion and superstition. In order to question it.