William Winwood Reade
William Winwood Reade
William Winwood Reade was a British historian, explorer, and philosopher. His two best-known books, The Martyrdom of Manand The Outcast, were included in the Thinker's Library...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionHistorian
christian dream spiritual
Christians believe themselves to be the aristocracy of heaven upon earth, they are admitted to the spiritual court, while millions of men in foreign lands have never been presented. They bow their knees and say they are 'miserable sinners,' and their hearts rankle with abominable pride. Poor infatuated fools! Their servility is real and their insolence is real but their king is a phantom and their palace is a dream.
beautiful philosophy buddhism
A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.
egypt essence together
The essence of religion is inertia; the essence of science is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to improve. If, as in Egypt, they are firmly chained together, either science will advance, in which case the religion will be altered, or the religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal.
compassion oxen sheep
Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.
father believe angel
There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.
religious fall men
To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall.
future men land
And then, the Earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet and sun from sun. The Earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the Universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds.
religious men atheism
One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature - a sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man.
mind looks made
If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.
curiosity expansion inquiry
The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.
doubt savages offspring
Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.
abuse doubt society
What a state of society is this in which freethinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as sin?
egypt soldier citizens
It is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that the private citizens did not carry them at all.
genius monkeys expansion
Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.