Historic Humanists- Clara Barton

Clarissa Harlowe Barton (better known as Clara Barton) (December 25, 1821 (although there is a confusion with her date of birth, as her birth certificate says the 25th, while her family members say that she was born the day before Christmas, the 24th)–April 12, 1912) was a pioneer American teacher, nurse, and humanitarian. She has been described as having had an “indomitable spirit” and is best remembered for organizing the American Red Cross. Read on…

Historical Humanists- Professor Henri Louis Bergson

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science”

“Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable”

“The essential function of the universe, which is a machine for making gods.” Read on…

Famous Freethinkers- Russell Baker

“One of the many burdens of the person professing Christianity has always been the odium likely to be heaped upon him by fellow Christians quick to smell out, denounce and punish fraud, hypocrisy and general unworthiness among those who assert the faith. In ruder days, disputes about what constituted a fully qualified Christian often led to sordid quarrels in which the disputants tortured, burned and hanged each other in the conviction that torture, burning and hanging were Christian things to do….”
— Russell Baker Read on…

Historical Humanists- Bagehot, Walter

Great and terrible systems of divinity and philosophy lie round about us, which, if true, might drive a wise man mad.”

“So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it unwise, and their conscience it is wrong.”

— Walter Bagehot Read on…

Famous Freethinkers- Angier, Natalie

So, I’ll out myself. I’m an Atheist. I don’t believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don’t believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. Read on…

Historic Humanists- Bayle, Pierre

It has been asserted, that a moral Atheist would be a monster beyond the power of nature to create: I reply, that it is not more strange for an Atheist to live virtuously, than for a Christian to abandon himself to crime!

If we believe the last kind of monster, why dispute the existence of the first?

In matters of religion it is very easy to deceive a man, and very hard to undeceive him.
— Pierre Bayle Read on…

Historical Humanists- Aristotle

Prayers and sacrifices are of no avail.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. Read on…

Historic Humanists- Auden, W. H.

“The only reason the Protestants and Catholics have given up the idea of universal domination is because they’ve realised they can’t get away with it.”
–W. H. Auden Read on…

Historic Humanists-Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules

“Theism is so confused and the sentences in which “God” appears so incoherent and so incapable of verifiability or falsifiability that to speak of belief or unbelief, faith or unfaith, is logically impossible.”

— A.J. Ayer Read on…