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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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Disestablishment of the Church in Wales (1920)
In 1920 the Church of England in Wales ceased to be the established church, the first disestablishment of an Anglican church in Great Britain.
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Percy Vaughan (1879–1917)
To know him added a zest to existence, and was rich compensation for much that depresses the idealist. Percy Vaughan […]
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Ralph Vaughan Williams 1872-1958
I am myself a musician, and I believe that all the arts, and especially music, are necessary to a full […]
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Douglas Houghton (1898–1996)
Elected to Parliament in 1949… and here I am! Where else could I be? The pages of the New Humanist […]
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Ernest Thurtle (1884–1954)
It was early in the war, and we were stationed at a pleasant village in Sussex. One evening a sergeant […]
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Nina Spiller (1878–1967)
Nina Spiller was a lifelong worker for women’s rights, who played an active role in the humanist movement for more […]
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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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Bill Bynner (1900-1984)
Bill Bynner was a humanist, socialist, and civil servant. As the editor of South Place Ethical Society‘s Ethical Record wrote […]
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Lady Rhondda (1883-1958)
There is nothing in this world to compare with the joy of finding something to do that one believes to […]
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Winifred Holtby (1898-1935)
The attempt to create communities where men and women alike share the full stature of humanity is an attempt to […]
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Mary Sheepshanks (1872-1960)
Mary Sheepshanks was a humanist who saw her feminist, pacifist, and cosmopolitan beliefs as being natural expressions of her humanist […]
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Sylvia Pankhurst (1882-1960)
Against the militarist totalitarian state, I have striven. For the freedom of the human spirit to develop under the kindly […]
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Helena Swanwick (1864-1939)
Life would be far more truly envisaged if we dropped the silly phrases “men’s and women’s questions”; for indeed there […]
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Henry Noel Brailsford (1873–1958)
Our goal must be the good of the whole human society. Henry Noel Brailsford, Olives of Endless Age: being a […]
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Kingsley Martin (1897-1969)
I believe in the supreme virtue of exploring. I believe in finding out. Even if I don’t succeed, I still […]
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Rationalist Peace Society
…a slowly growing public opinion in favour of arbitration as the alternative to war… is not in consequence of any […]
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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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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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Conscientious Objectors’ Commemorative Stone
To all those who have established and who are maintaining the right to refuse to kill. Their foresight and courage […]
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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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Moral Instruction League
Its aim will be to secularise education and make moral training the chief aim of the school life. A great […]
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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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Fenner Brockway (1888-1988)
I had long put on one side the purist pacifist view that one should have nothing to do with a […]
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Charles Kennedy Scott (1876-1965)
… in broad terms, with our lecturers we attempt to define our intellectual standpoint; with our music we try to […]
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Harry Snell (1865-1944)
Harry Snell was a socialist politician and campaigner, a devoted advocate of the Ethical Movement and a key figure in […]
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Alice Woods (1849-1941)
In some way or another time for quiet concentrated thought must be found for our youth… Perhaps we are a […]