...we are the children of this beautiful planet that we have lately seen photographed from the moon. We were not delivered into it by some god, but have come forth from it. We are its eyes and mind, its seeing and its thinking. And the earth, together with its sun, this light around which it flies like a moth, came forth, we are told, from a nebula; and that nebula, in turn, from space. So that we are the mind, ultimately, of space.

• evolution
• humanity
• freethought
• creation
• myth
• causa-sui
• consciousness
• perspective
• unity
• all is one
• god
• light
• children
• moon

Conversion, as you understand it,' the aged figure told him placidly, 'consists of pounding one's own words into a man's ears until they start coming out of his mouth.

• religion
• conversion
• ideas
• freethought
• conditioning

THOMAS JEFFERSON. A revolutionary hemp-grower who once wrote, '[The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion.' Few of the pious tourists who read the italicized portion of this statement carved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., are aware of its context.

• freedom
• freethought
• government
• jefferson
• religion
• god
• power
• will
• opinion
• fear
• hemp
• revolution