Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with...

‘New Atheism”’ gained such currency. It is a misnomer. There is nothing new about nonbelief. All of us, without exception, are born knowing nothing of God or gods, and acquire notions of religion solely through...

The Fanatics have dirtied its fiber, and their mottos have reated a thick layer of mold over its wounds, one of total intolerance, feeding on the indoctrination of the youth cliques.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great...

A ‘normal person’ is what is left after society has squeezed out all unconventional opinions and aspirations out of a human being.

This is not hyperbole. It is possible for the average professor to have been taught by leftists, grown up in a left-leaning city, read only left-leaning books, entertained by leftists in pop culture and became...

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

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an...

The goal of intellectual life should be to see and understand what is true, not merely to adhere to a prevailing orthodoxy.

learning” is motivated by extrinsic rewards and punishments rather than by the children’s true interests—turns learning from a joyful activity into a chore, to be avoided whenever possible. Coercive schooling, which tragically is the norm...

I always hear parents talking about how outraged they are because their kid saw a boob or something like that on TV. I never hear anyone say that they’re outraged because a cartoon character in...

A specialist’s mind is a slave to his specialization.

…the most important thing you must remember when dealing with a politically biased professor is to be friendly.

Empathy is the sunlight to the vampire of culture.

After a victim is made to participate in an act of evil, the people in charge put a lot of energy into convincing the child or adult that he or she is evil and a...

all children should be forced into a prison-like building for 12 years.

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.

If human beings weren’t ‘dumbable’ enough to be made soldiers, war would be nothing but an exchange of swear words between a handful of individuals.

God (Nature, in my view) makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. He fores one soil to yield the products of another, one tree to bear another’s fruit. He confuses...

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

Ritually abusive groups also convince children that something evil has been put inside them. For example, a child is made to believe he or she has a “black heart” – seeing the abuser holding an...

School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong,...

We are all born free from all religious affiliations and only come to believe in such things after being introduced to it ― so, atheism is the default position. Although some children are not indoctrinated...

Schooling is a manufacturing process whereby the raw material called curious boys is turned into products called obedient men.

Thomas Jefferson once said: ‘Of course the people don’t want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and...

It takes a huge amount of culture to normalize “crazy”, and of course that’s its main focus

No teacher has the right to cure a child of making noises on a drum. The only curing that should be practiced is the curing of unhappiness.

Liberty is no less a blessing because oppression has so long darkened the mind that it can not appreciate it.

Some people spend their entire lives devoted to a religion that claims to be the ‘right’ religion… they often deny scientific evidence that contradicts their archaic holy books, they sometimes oppress those who disagree with...

School programs the schooled to type a CV. Life inspires the unschooled to type a business plan.

Beware of what you teach your children in the womb.

Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot therefore be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in errors.

The very power of [textbook writers] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and...

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately,...

My dad had limitations. That’s what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.

Most people say that Shakespeare rocked merely because most people say that Shakespeare rocked.

We are born free, but are taught to obey orders.

But aliens? There are TV shows about them. There are books and movies and more. The media indoctrinates you to them until people are so desensitized they don’t flinch at seeing aliens on TV or...

Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have...

There is nothing in the record of the past two years when both Houses of Congress have been controlled by the Republican Party which can lead any person to believe that those promises will be...

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

A soldier is a killer painted hero.

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man’s future.

Many myths and religions have some kind of threat of retribution from their god or gods, and their doctrines warn of the dangers of doing various forbidden things. Why? Because memes involving danger are the...

Schools train you to be ignorant with style […] they prepare you to be a usable victim for a military industrial complex that needs manpower. As long as you’re just smart enough to do a...

I think if a story has a message it should be incidental and accidental, otherwise it leans too close to indoctrination.

Ingersoll could not understand the mind of those who, once having been told the truth, preferred to remain under the spell of superstition and in ignorance. He could not understand why people would not accept...

A child can learn what is right as easy as what is wrong and whatever impressions are made on the mind when it is plastic will remain there.

You can feed a skeptic the party line but you can’t make him swallow it.

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of...