"...to be modern is to idolatrise one century out of many."

Free-thinking (or re-thinking, which is a better word for it) is not, then, a thing which every man should do everywhere. But when a man does do it, it should be thorough and sweeping and searching. It should not be content with doubting a few old doctrines which a man has heard doubted; it should doubt the things that have never been doubted, or it is useless. A man should question his unconscious convictions, as well as his conscious ones. For a man is conscious of the past, but unconscious of the present [....]

[...] He must, in a word, not be modern; for to be modern is to idolatrise one century out of many. He must be outside centuries, living by the immortal mind.

This is the grand and noble and invaluable thing called Free Thought, of which no praise can conceivably be excessive. But it happens that it is the fact, accidental enough perhaps, that of all the free-thinkers I have known, very few indeed have done anything of this sort, or shown any disposition to do so: most of them are imprisoned in their hats. And those that have done so have in number of cases become...but I will not be controversial.

-September 30, 1905, Daily News