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A. E. Heath (1887–1961)
Philosopher, wit, and President of the Rationalist Press Association from 1949 to 1954, who founded the philosophy department at Swansea.
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A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter’s cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his […]
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Abraham Kovoor (1898–1978)
As the Indian freethought papers have said, by his personal example he left a thousand Kovoors, and this is his […]
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Adam Gowans Whyte (1875–1950)
I have often enough been burdened, disgusted, and outraged with life, but never have I been bored with it. There […]
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Alan Turing (1912-1954)
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done. Alan […]
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Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose […]
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Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
Aldous Huxley was never just a cynic or a mystic, or for that matter just a writer. He was a […]
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Alexander Faulkner Shand (1858–1936)
…for a long time, like the philosophers of old, I was trying to find indisputable foundations. How long it took […]
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Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956)
By Steve Ratcliff Steve has been researching humanists from LGBT history, focusing on digitised materials from the archives of LGBT […]
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Alice Vickery (1844-1929)
Dr Alice Vickery was a humanist, physician, and devoted champion of women’s reproductive rights. Her tombstone inscription remembers her as […]
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Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
Auguste Comte was a French writer, philosopher, and social scientist, whose theory of positivism was a significant influence on the […]
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Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution
…for the Promotion and Advancement of Science, Literature and Art Trust deed of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute […]
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Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love […]
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Blackfriars Rotunda
In the absence of a better—the palladium of what liberty we have… the birthplace of mind, and the focus of […]
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Books Which Made Me a Rationalist
Under the above heading we shall, during the forthcoming months, publish a series of articles from well-known Rationalist authors which […]
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British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology
The British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology was officially formed in April 1914, ‘for the consideration of problems […]
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Cambridge Heretics
The gist of heresy is free personal choice in act, and specially in thought – the rejection of traditional faiths […]
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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things […]
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Church of Humanity
No creative thinker has so governed… my mind as the French genius who framed the maxim – “Love for principle, […]
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Constance Naden (1858-1889)
…the only universal truths which exist are the fundamental laws of the mind. Philosophy, then, which is the science of […]
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David Oppenheimer (1914–1991)
In my experience he was the kindest of men, far too modest about his own contributions and always prepared to […]
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Democritus (c. 460-370 BCE)
Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passion, his […]
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Douglas Adams (1952–2001)
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the […]
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Down House
On 17 September 1842 Darwin closed the door of Macaw Cottage, 12 Upper Gower Street, in London, and boarded his […]
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Edith Durham (1863–1944)
Mary Edith Durham was a writer, artist, and anthropologist, who became well known for her work on Albania. She was […]
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Edward Clodd (1840–1930)
He was one of the few of whom it can be said that he had a gift for friendship… There […]
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Edward Max Nicholson (1904-2003)
Conservation… draws us towards not only a scientific but a philosophical and historical approach to the problems of the earth […]
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Edwin Ray Lankester (1847–1929)
Edwin Ray Lankester was a zoologist and protégé of T. H. Huxley, as well as a longtime member and Honorary […]
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Ephraim Chambers (1680-1740)
… a man who thinks himself bound to all offices of Humanity. Ephraim Chambers, self-composed epitaph Ephraim Chambers was an […]
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Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802)
Would it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, […]
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Eslanda Goode Robeson (1895–1965)
I am willing and eager to surrender as much of my personal sovereignty as is necessary, in order to secure […]
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Eustace Chesser (1902–1973)
All through his life he fought fearlessly for the causes in which he deeply believed and he fulfilled himself in […]
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Francis Crick (1916-2004)
Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, the biological molecule of hereditary information, and cracked the genetic code by which […]
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From the archives: Joseph Rotblat on Bertrand Russell
The human species so deeply loved by Bertrand Russell and so much enriched by his life’s work is now in […]
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From the archives: Man’s Alleged Spiritual Nature
With all the pretensions of spiritualists… No great truth containing a benefit to humanity has ever reached us; no addition […]
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From the archives: The Great Human Detective Story
Humanism is a philosophy of life based on a concern for humanity rather than a belief in god. Humanists believe […]
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From the archives: Towards Freedom
Truth needs the friendly grip of earnest men and women of every class. There is no distinction where it dwells. […]
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From the archives: Vera Brittain’s toast to the Rationalist Press Association (1935)
I think that one of the most hopeful signs at the present day, and one for which this Movement can […]
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Girton College, Cambridge
Girton College at the University of Cambridge has educated and employed a host of remarkable humanists and freethinkers, many of […]
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Gora (1902-1975)
Godlessness is negative. It merely denies the existence of god. Atheism is positive. It asserts the condition that results from […]
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Govind Deodhekar (1919-1997)
He was dedicated to the cause of secularism, but in his own gentle way he did not neglect to enjoy […]
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Greevz Fisher (1845-1931)
Mr. Fysher was in many respects a remarkable man. His interests were wide, and whatever he took up he carried […]
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Gustav Spiller (1864-1940)
The Conscience has eclipsed the Scriptures; Science has destroyed the belief in Divine Interposition; Democracy and Civism have shown men […]
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H. G. Wells (1866–1946)
More science is needed, more interchange and more co-ordination. Act to that end. This is my philosophy of action; this […]
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Harry Stopes-Roe (1924-2014)
Harry Stopes-Roe was one of the most tireless and dedicated humanist campaigners of the 20th century. Son of the influential […]
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Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; […]
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Hermann Bondi (1919-2005)
It is in service to others, it is as members of the community, that our existence lies. Hermann Bondi, Humanism […]
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Humanists UK Campaigns
While much of the Humanist Heritage website looks back to the earlier years of the organised humanist movement, recent decades […]
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Iain Banks (1954–2013)
What Iain brought to his writing was himself. He brought a wonderful combination of the dark and the light side of life, […]
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J. D. Bernal (1901–1971)
Science should be taught not merely as a subject but should come into all subjects. Its importance in history and […]
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J. P. Gilmour (1860–1941)
Scottish pharmacist, editor of the Pharmaceutical Journal, and Chairman of the Rationalist Press Association.
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Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974)
The notion that a man shall judge for himself what he is told, sifting the evidence and weighing the conclusions, […]
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Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964)
Essentially, I am interested in this world, in this life, not in some other world or a future life. Whether […]
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John Boyd Orr (1880–1971)
The big problem of today is how shall we adjust these tremendous new forces so that they can be harnessed […]
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John Gilmour (1906–1986)
In the first place, then, why do we botanise?… The enjoyment of the beauty and fascination of flowers in their natural […]
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John Stewart Bell (1928-1990)
In the beginning natural philosophers tried to understand the world around them. Trying to do that they hit upon the […]
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John Tyndall (1820-1893)
All religious theories, schemes and systems, which embrace notions of cosmogony, or which otherwise reach into the domain of science, […]
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John Tyndall’s Belfast Address (1874)
It is not to the point to say that the views of Lucretius and Bruno, of Darwin and Spencer, may […]
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Joseph McCabe (1867–1955)
Rationalism is… primarily a mental attitude, not a creed or a definite body of negative conclusions. No uniformity of opinions […]
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Julian Huxley (1887-1975)
What the sciences discover about the natural world and about the origins, nature and destiny of man is the truth […]
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Karl Popper (1902-1994)
… the responsibility for our ethical decisions is entirely ours and cannot be shifted to anybody else; neither to God, […]
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Kathleen Nott (1905-1999)
Now art, certainly literary art, is ‘existential’ and has to be so. It is, if nothing else, about the real […]
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Key Hill Cemetery
For earth is not as though thou ne’er hadst been. Constance Naden, ‘The Pantheist’s Song of Immortality’ (1881) Birmingham’s Key […]
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Lydia Becker (1827–1890)
Genius is no respecter of sex, and mental ability is scattered in supreme disregard of conventional arrangements. Lydia Becker quoted […]
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Manchester University Ethical Society
Object: to provide an ‘open forum’ for the fearless consideration of modern problems relating to ethics, sociology, education, political theory, […]
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Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623–1673)
I had rather die in the adventure of noble achievements, than live in obscure and sluggish security Spoken by the […]
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Margaret Chappellsmith (1806-1883)
Margaret Chappellsmith was a devotee of the socialist and secularist ideas of Robert Owen, becoming one of the Owenite movement’s […]
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Margaret Knight (1903-1983)
With these basic [humanist] beliefs there go commonly two corollaries. First, that virtue is a matter of promoting human well-being, […]
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Mary Shelley (1797–1851)
The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley was raised without […]
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Max Gate
Max Gate is the former home of Thomas Hardy in Dorchester, Dorset. Hardy designed and lived in Max Gate from 1885 until […]
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Mechanics’ Institutes
Why are these minds left without the means of obtaining that knowledge which they so ardently desire and why are […]
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Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950)
We must face the fact that, though the free intelligence and the spirit of community are at once the goal […]
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Peter Chalmers Mitchell (1864–1945)
We have lost Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, the maker of the modern Zoo, great humanist as well as great scientist. […]
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Peter Draper (1933-2016)
Humanists believe that this is our world, our responsibility, our possibility. If you agree, would anyone know? Peter Draper, ‘Values […]
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Positivism
Positivism is a philosophical system based on the writings of French thinker Auguste Comte, which flourished from the 1830s onwards. […]
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Presidents of Humanists UK
Humanists UK began as the Union of Ethical Societies in 1896, becoming the Ethical Union in 1920, the British Humanist […]
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Presidents of the Rationalist Association
From Graham Wallas in 1926 to Laurie Taylor in 2025: the twelve philosophers, scientists, writers and campaigners who led the Rationalist Press Association.
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Rationalism
Rationalism is not a dogma but a method. It does not tell us what to believe but how to find […]
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Rationalist Press Association
The Rationalist Press Association (later known as simply the Rationalist Association) had its origins in the London print works of […]
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Raymond Firth (1901–2002)
Though only some anthropologists are humanists, my own anthropological studies confirmed my review of religion as a human art, not […]
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Richard Dimsdale Stocker (1877-1935)
But this much is certain, that, taking the world as we find it, sympathy, plus a modicum of common sense […]
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Ritchie Calder (1906–1982)
Humanist ethics, as I understand them, are concerned with mankind. As humanists we believe in reason, but we also believe […]
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Ronald Fletcher (1921–1992)
Humanism is… a tradition of thought and feeling combined with social action which stems from classical times and which has […]
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Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)
I agree that faith is essential to success in life (success of any sort) but I do not accept your […]
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Sara A. Underwood (1838-1911)
Man for man in larger sense does what heaven fails to do. Sara A. Underwood, quoted by Rufus K. Noyes […]
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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
If after this survey of the nature of illusions and delusions, we turn again to religious doctrines, we may reiterate […]
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Terry Pratchett (1948–2015)
There is no hope but us. There is no mercy but us. There is no justice. There is just us… […]
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The Athenæum
The Athenæum is a London club founded in 1824, around the pursuit of science and literature. Its reputation as ‘the […]
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The British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections include objects of humanist heritage […]
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The Ethical Movement
Not by the Creed but by the Deed. Motto of the Society for Ethical Culture of New York, founded in […]
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The Humanitarian League (1891-1919)
The Humanitarian League is a Society of thinkers and workers, irrespective of class or creed, who have united for the […]
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The Open University
The Open University was founded in 1969 with the ambition of providing access to higher education for people who had […]
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The Progressive League
The Progressive League was an organisation dedicated to the advancement of scientific humanism, founded by author H.G. Wells and philosopher […]
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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet, renowned for his apparently bleak outlook, but finely tuned to life and […]
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Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
Thomas Henry Huxley was a man of science, a biologist, and educator. He helped to transform scientific study into a […]
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UNESCO
Its main concern is with peace and security and with human welfare, in so far as they can be subserved […]
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Voltaire (1694–1778)
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon […]
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William Beveridge (1879-1963)
The one thing in which I am interested wholly and completely is the getting to know something about human society […]
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William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879)
Our interest, it seems to me, lies with so much of the past as may serve to guide our actions […]