Robert G. Ingersoll

When I became convinced that the Universe is natural - that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling , the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light, and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world- not even in infinite space. I was free- free to think, to express my thoughts- free to live to my own ideal- free to live for myself and those I loved-free to use all my faculties, all my senses- free to spread imagination's wings- free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope-free to judge and determine for myself- free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past- free from popes and priests- free from all the "called" and "set apart"- free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies- free from the fear of eternal pain- free from the winged monsters of the night- free from devils, ghosts, and gods. For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of thought- no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings- no chains for my limbs- no lashed for my back- no fires for my flesh- no master's frown or threat- no following another's steps- no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words. I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds.

And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain- for the freedom of labor and thought- for those who fell in the fierce fields of war, to those who died in dungeons bound with chains- to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs- to those hose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn- to those by fire consumed- to all the wise, thoe good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it hight, that light might conquer darkness still.

The Gay Science

Origin of knowledge.— Over immense periods of time the intellect produced nothing but errors. A few of these proved to be useful and helped to preserve the species: those who hit upon or inherited these had better luck in their struggle for themselves and their progeny. Such erroneous articles of faith, which were continually inherited, until they became almost part of the basic endowment of the species, include the following: that there are enduring things; that there are equal things; that there are things, substances, bodies; that a thing is what it appears to be; that our will is free; that what is good for me is also good in itself. It was only very late that such propositions were denied and doubted—it was only very late that truth emerged, as the weakest form of knowledge. It seemed that one was unable to live with it, our organism was prepared for the opposite; all its higher functions, sense perception and every kind of sensation worked with those basic errors which had been incorporated since time immemorial. Indeed, even in the realm of knowledge these propositions became the norms according to which "true" and "untrue" were determined—down to the most remote regions of logic. Thus: the strength of knowledge does not depend on its degree of truth but on its age, on the degree to which it has been incorporated, on its character as a condition of life. Where life and knowledge seemed to be at odds there was never any real fight; but denial and doubt were simply considered madness. Those exceptional thinkers, like the Eleatics, who nevertheless posited and clung to the opposites of the natural errors, believed that it was possible to live in accordance with these opposites: they invented the sage as the man who was unchangeable and impersonal, the man of the universality of intuition who was One and All at the same time, with a special capacity for his inverted knowledge; they had the faith that their knowledge was also the principle of life. But in order to claim all of this, they had to deceive themselves about their own state: they had to attribute to themselves, fictitiously, impersonality and changeless duration; they had to misapprehend the nature of the knower; they had to deny the role of the impulses in knowledge; and quite generally they had to conceive of reason as a completely free and spontaneous activity; they shut their eyes to the fact that they, too, had arrived at their propositions through opposition to common sense, or owing to a desire for tranquility, for sole possession, or for dominion. The subtler development of honesty and skepticism eventually made these people, too, impossible; their ways of living and judging were seen to be also dependent upon the primeval impulses and basic errors of all sentient existence.— This subtler honesty and skepticism came into being wherever two contradictory sentences appeared to be applicable to life because both were compatible with the basic errors, and it was therefore possible to argue about the higher or lower degree of utility for life; also wherever new propositions, though not useful for life, were also evidently not harmful to life: in such cases there was room for the expression of an intellectual play impulse, and honesty and skepticism were innocent and happy like all play. Gradually, the human brain became full of such judgements and convictions, and a ferment, struggle, and lust for power [Machtgelüst] developed in this tangle. Not only utility and delight but every kind of impulse took sides in this fight about "truths"; the intellectual fight became an occupation, an attraction, a profession, a duty, something dignified—: and eventually knowledge and the striving for the true found their place as a need among other needs. Henceforth not only faith and conviction but also scrutiny, denial, mistrust, and contradiction became a power, all "evil" instincts were subordinated to knowledge, employed in her service, and acquired the splendor of what is permitted, honored, and useful—and eventually even the eye and innocence of the good. Thus knowledge became a piece of life itself, and hence a continually growing power: until eventually knowledge collided with these primeval basic errors, two lives, two powers, both in the same human being. The thinker: that is now that being in whom the impulse for truth and those life-preserving errors clash for the first fight, after the impulse for truth has proved to be also a life-preserving power. Compared to the significance of this fight, everything else is a matter of indifference: the ultimate question about the conditions of life has been posed here, and we confront the first attempt to answer this question by experiment. To what extent can truth endure incorporation?—that is the question, that is the experiment.