William Winwood Reade

The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search…

— William Winwood Reade

And then, the Earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet…

— William Winwood Reade

Reade was an emancipating writer because he seemed to speak as man to man to resolve history into an intelligible pattern in…

— William Winwood Reade

What a state of society is this in which freethinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as…

— William Winwood Reade

Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.

— William Winwood Reade

If Christianity were true religious persecution would become a pious and charitable duty: if God designs to punish men for their opinions…

— William Winwood Reade

Open the book of universal history at what period we may, it is always the India trade which is the cause of…

— William Winwood Reade

It is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and…

— William Winwood Reade

A day will come when the European god of the nineteenth century will be classed with the gods of Olympus and the…

— William Winwood Reade

To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches…

— William Winwood Reade

Christians believe themselves to be the aristocracy of heaven upon earth, they are admitted to the spiritual court, while millions of men…

— William Winwood Reade

As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a…

— William Winwood Reade

A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a…

— William Winwood Reade

The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search…

— William Winwood Reade

Men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels, rather than elevated apes.

— William Winwood Reade

Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.

— William Winwood Reade

One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature - a sincerely religious man is often…

— William Winwood Reade

Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.

— William Winwood Reade

The essence of religion is inertia; the essence of science is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it…

— William Winwood Reade

It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit,…

— William Winwood Reade

All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are…

— William Winwood Reade

As for the system of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a man to rise or fall, it is merely the…

— William Winwood Reade

One book that has influenced the writer very strongly is Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man...It is still an extraordinarily inspiring presentation of…

— William Winwood Reade

In Europe itself it is not probable that war will ever absolutely cease until science discovers some destroying force so simple in…

— William Winwood Reade

If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds…

— William Winwood Reade