“Loyalty to petrified opinion, never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.”

MT wasn’t big on inflexible, dogmatic minds, and was suspicious of points of view, and institutions, that didn’t pass the litmus test of examination. He figured if an idea was valid it would pass the test, and if it didn’t, then move on down the road.

He said, “In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

As far as he was concerned, religion was like marriage: easy to get into and hard to get out of. While he cherished his marriage he pointed out that in many cases, “It is easier to stay out than get out.” One may enter as a matter of curiosity, hope and unknowing, but was kicked out because of the opposite. Stagnant beliefs were no better to him than stagnant water: neither moved and both stank. In his words, “A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.”

A most peculiar human tendency occurs when closed-minded people profess to be open-minded. His view was that traveling far and wide opened those closed minds and exposed a person’s honesty and genuine nature: “Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime,” and “the gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad.” 

While quick to expose pretenders and the self-righteous, along with the current Dali Lama, he embraced kindness. They lived in different times but said essentially the same thing: “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”