“I say to the grownups, 'If you want to deny evolution and live in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we've observed in the universe that's fine. But don't make your kids do it.”

Edward Snowden, NSA files source: 'If they want to get you, in time they will' http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why, The Guardian, 10 June 2013.

Coast-to-Coast AM interview (August 2-3, 2000)

Edward Snowden: 'The US government will say I aided our enemies' – video interview http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-video-interview, published by The Guardian on 8 July 2013.
Interview with Glenn Greenwald, 6 June 2013, Part 2

Source: Philosophies from an old Journal

Pearls of Wisdom

as quoted by Roberto Ridolfi, 'The Life of Niccolo Machiavelli', page 74.

“And that was a pretty heavy statement for me to hear as a child,” Ward explained. But he took it to heart, and subsequently, soared with success. “I was always very good in school because I saw the importance of it,” he said. “I never took drugs. I never smoked. I never drank…not because I was being Puritan, but because I simply did not think those things were good to do.”
As qtd. in Herbie J Pilato, “Burt Ward — The Man Wonder” https://medium.com/@herbiejpilato/burt-ward-the-man-wonder-4ba41eaf6c69, Medium, (Feb 14, 2019)

1920s, Truth is a Pathless Land (1929)
Context: Your prejudices, your fears, your authorities, your churches new and old – all these, I maintain, are a barrier to understanding. I cannot make myself clearer than this. I do not want you to agree with me, I do not want you to follow me, I want you to understand what I am saying. “This understanding is necessary because your belief has not transformed you but only complicated you, and because you are not willing to face things as they are. You want to have your own gods – new gods instead of the old, new religions instead of the old, new forms instead of the old – all equally valueless, all barriers, all limitations, all crutches. Instead of old spiritual distinctions you have new spiritual distinctions, instead of old worships you have new worships. You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else; and although you have been preparing for me for eighteen years, when I say all these things are unnecessary, when I say that you must put them all away and look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification, and for the incorruptibility of the self, not one of you is willing to do it. There may be a few, but very, very few. So why have an organization?

Informal conversation with one of a group of employees who had gathered in a corridor to greet him at the Pentagon (May 1, 1970), reported in The Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, 1970, p. 417, footnote 1.
1970s