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Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
Rupert Brooke’s 1914 sonnets made him a national symbol of patriotic sacrifice, but the man behind the legend was a sceptic and a socialist, at home among the freethinkers of pre-war Cambridge, who left religion behind before he left school and never returned to it.
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Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914)
Radical Mayor of Birmingham and champion of unsectarian schools, who lost his Unitarian faith and called himself ‘a very reverent agnostic’.
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Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
Conservative Prime Minister, son of a self-described \u2018reverent agnostic\u2019 and lifelong disciple of Darwin, who led Britain into the Second World War.
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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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From the archives: ‘Humanity’s Debt to Thomas Paine’ (1892)
Those clouds called creeds are destined all to fade away, but the sky will remain—humanity; and in the sky will […]
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Charles Watts (1836–1906)
Avoiding alike mysticism and shallow denial, he was a true Agnostic, anxious not merely to beat down error, but to […]
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W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
I remain an agnostic, and the practical outcome of agnosticism is that you act as though God did not 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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Michael Manley (1924–1997)
I like life with its mysteries. I don’t need my imponderables filled in for me. Michael Manley quoted by Rachel […]
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John Galsworthy (1867–1933)
…the only efficient, the only decent prayer, is Action. John Galsworthy, ‘Philosophy of Life’ in Glimpses and Reflections (1937) Best […]
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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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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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Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)
A cheerful and reverent Agnostic, whose whole life was one of unselfishness and devotion to lofty aims, who was tolerant […]
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Clement Attlee (1883-1967)
…having now exceeded the age of three score years and ten, I would say that up to the present I […]
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Julia Stephen (1846-1895)
Purity of life, sincerity of action, obedience to law, love of our fellow creatures, all those qualities which ennoble life […]
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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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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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Ipswich Heretics
We must grow out of the crude and unreal ideas of immortality and content ourselves with the only kind of […]
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Belfast Ethical Society
This Society has for its object the promotion of right conduct on a purely natural and human basis and the […]
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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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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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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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Red Lion Square
As well as being home to Conway Hall and its humanist library, Red Lion Square contains statues of two prominent […]
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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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Humanists International
Humanists International was formed in 1952 as the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU): a federation of the American Ethical […]
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Agnostics Adoption Society
From the outset IAS aimed to have an open approach to prospective adopters irrespective of their race, religion and creed, […]
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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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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things […]