Anthony Collins Quotes

We have a right to know or may lawfully know any truth. And a right to know any truth whatsoever implies a right to think freely.

Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power…

All I claim, all I plead for, is liberty of thought and expression. That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is absolutely true, but what I think is true. I do not pretend to tell all the truth..

We must preserve our right to think and differ.

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error... They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only... If [free enquiry] be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and new ones encouraged.

I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.

The most fatal blow to progress is slavery of the intellect. The most sacred right of humanity is the right to think, and next to the right to think is the right to express that thought without fear.

sooner or later, if the activity of the mind is restricted anywhere it will cease to function even where it is allowed to be free.

My business in life has been to think and learn, and to speak out with absolute freedom what I have thought and learned. The freedom is itself a positive and never-failing enjoyment to me, after the bondage of my early life.

The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.

I hate to tell people what they should think 'cause I really have an aversion when people tell me what to think.

For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead.

I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.

Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? Free from fear, from perturbation, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves.

A man is allowed sufficient freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject properly.... But the scene is changed as you come homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain to what would be reason and truth if asserted in China.

To be able to think freely, a man must be certain that no consequence will follow whatever he writes.

All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!

At times of writing I never think what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth.

What I object to in Mother is that she wants me to think her thoughts. Apart from the question of hypocrisy, I prefer my own.

Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

When you place a high value on truth, you have to think for yourself.