The right of civilized men to think freely and speak freely, without asking leave of authority, clerical or lay.

From H. L. Mencken in "Thomas Henry Huxley" in the Baltimore Evening Sun (4 May 1925).

The row was over Darwinism, but before it ended Darwinism was almost forgotten. What Huxley fought for was something far greater: the right of civilized men to think freely and speak freely, without asking leave of authority, clerical or lay. How new that right is! And yet how firmly held! Today it would be hard to imagine living without it. No man of self-respect, when he has a thought to utter, pauses to wonder what the bishops will have to say about it. The views of bishops are simply ignored. Yet only sixty years ago they were still so powerful that they gave Huxley the battle of his life.

Today we still fight those bishops, though they are now bishops of ideology and empty conviction rather than bishops of religion.