“A scientist, an artist, a citizen is not like a child who needs papa methodology and mama rationality to give him security and direction, he can take care of himself, for he is the inventor not only of laws, theories, pictures, plays, forms of music, ways of dealing with his fellow man, institutions, but also entire world view, he is the inventor of entire forms of like.”

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1969) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1969/delbruck-lecture.html

1920s
Source: 'Die Blume Anna', a poem of Kurt Schwitters, published in 'Consistent Poetry Art' contribution to 'Magazine G', No. 3, ed. Hans Richter, 1924

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 22

Source: Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel (1995), Ch. 23

1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: One of the most important things to secure for him is the right to hold and to express the religious views that best meet his own soul needs. Any political movement directed against anybody of our fellow- citizens because of their religious creed is a grave offense against American principles and American institutions. It is a wicked thing either to support or to oppose a man because of the creed he professes. This applies to Jew and Gentile, to Catholic and Protestant, and to the man who would be regarded as unorthodox by all of them alike. Political movements directed against men because of their religious belief, and intended to prevent men of that creed from holding office, have never accomplished anything but harm. This was true in the days of the ‘Know-Nothing’ and Native-American parties in the middle of the last century; and it is just as true to-day. Such a movement directly contravenes the spirit of the Constitution itself. Washington and his associates believed that it was essential to the existence of this Republic that there should never be any union of Church and State; and such union is partially accomplished wherever a given creed is aided by the State or when any public servant is elected or defeated because of his creed. The Constitution explicitly forbids the requiring of any religious test as a qualification for holding office. To impose such a test by popular vote is as bad as to impose it by law. To vote either for or against a man because of his creed is to impose upon him a religious test and is a clear violation of the spirit of the Constitution.

Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran (1962) as translated by Anthony R. Ferris

George Bernard Shaw, in the Manchester Guardian, November 1, 1938.
Criticism

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 2. 1943-1945, p. 125