"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested." — Francis BaconBacon's memorable insight is specially significant when applied to the wide range of works by some of the world's most renowned writers, poets, philosophers, and intellectuals-men and women whose determination to espouse and defend the cause of humanism and freethought, interpreted broadly, has given us a well-endowed repository of the wisdom of the ages.In A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought, author David Allen Williams has mined this vast body of literature. The result is this priceless treasury of poetry and prose draped in art and rare steel engravings from more than a century ago. Amid its beauty, readers will find a unified call to reason, tolerance, and freedom of expression in opposition to the forces of ignorance, supernaturalism, superstition, and dogmatism. The words of over eighty of the world's most often read and frequently quoted authors are included: among them Aristotle, Matthew Arnold, Marcus Aurelius, Francis Bacon, Cicero, Joseph Conrad, Charles Darwin, Diogenes, John Donne, Will Durant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Epicurus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Edith Hamilton, Eric Hoffer, Homer, Robert Ingersoll, Thomas Jefferson, Lucretius, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, George Santayana, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Voltaire, H.G. Wells, and many others.A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought is a remarkable collection of compelling ideas and impressive art that deserves a place on every bookshelf.