Quotes that Speak to Naturism

Directly and Sometimes Indirectly

I have been collecting quotes relating to many subjects for many years. Below is a collection relating to Naturism and Nudism. Since this was a list that I never intended to share as I began I did not always cite where I found the quotes. So, if you know the source please let me know so it can be updated. Others I have intentionally taken the name off because they may have been from private conversations of online chats. If you recognize a quote as your own and you would like your name added please make me aware. There are many more I have collect but not yet sorted, but I’m guessing that most people will not want to read through more that fifteen pages of quoted. 

I would like to thank Phil O. and Mrs. Phil for allowing me the opportunity to make this list public. They are an inspiration and I look forward to meeting them in person in the future.

Thank You,

Randy

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Definitions

“Naturism is the enjoyment of getting naked as possible, wherever and whenever appropriate, alone or with others just for its own sake.”—Liz and James Egger, The Complete Guide to Nudism, Naturism & Nudists

The unclad human body is either morally neutral, or it is not. Naturists are moral reformers, whether they think of themselves in those terms or not. Naturism calls upon people to regard their own bodies and those of others as acceptable, not something to be feared or reviled. —Gregg Gatewood (https://nakedtruthjournal.blogspot.com/2010/10/transparency-in-facebook-age.html?m=1#comment-form)

“[Nudity] doesn’t have to be communal before it becomes nudism.” —Liz Egger  

“Nudism is a simple non-judgmental recognition of what is.”  -Sean Ian Hale 

“I am not a naturist, a nudist, a streaker, nor an exhibitionist. Labels are for clothes. My unclothed appearance is also not motivated sexually nor out of any gratuitous need to seek attention. I believe that while society continues to have a fundamentally negative relationship with the human body and appearance, we can never be a free or mature society. It’s the 21st century. Time to evolve.” – Russell Higgs – naked activist

“While Ethical Naturists enjoy the freedom of being nude, they also see naturism as a creed and a life philosophy. They believe that it is immoral to make people ashamed and embarrassed of their own image. They understand that society’s attitude towards the human body results in a lack of self-esteem.  The consequence is often a lack of self-confidence and the beginning of a variety of emotional dysfunctions. Accordingly, they strive to accept their natural selves and to respect others.” —BareOaks Family Naturist Park https://www.bareoaks.ca/ethical-naturism/

Creation 

“The existence in so many places of the tendency toward nudity is not a testimony to the fallenness of man. It is rather a testimony of the original condition of man … The inner desire to be naked and unashamed is a longing to get back to our original perfection.”— Philo Thelos 

“When we gaze upon the human body with purity of heart, what we are seeing is God himself” —Jim C.Cunningham

“The key to being Naked is not just about taking your clothes off … It’s about seeing, feeling and acknowledging every inch of your skin as a holy temple.”—Stephanie McManus  

“As a naturist myself I find it astonishing that a religion can worship a particular deity yet regard its most miraculous creation – the human body – as obscene and wicked and so shameful that it should be hidden from view.” —Liz Egger  

“You, reader, were created by the divine Word in your mother’s womb no less truly than Adam & Eve were created by Him. The same beautiful, wonderful, creative God still creates beautiful, wonderful things, including your body.” —Jim Cunningham 

“Nudity is the purest expression of the beauty which is visible, perfect and manifest work of God.—Alexandre Najjar” 

“A Creator-honoring, incarnational view of the naked human body dispels the fantasy-laden, porno-prudish conception religiously taught and pornographically exploited in Western culture.” David Hatton  

“If only we are as upfront about our nakedness as God originally intended, we will dispel the dark lies of pornography and also come To appreciate our own unique, very real beauty “ —Jim Cunningham  

“What the nudist does believe is that the artificial conditions of our machine age have robbed man of light and air that are not only valuable but essential to his physical well-being.” -Frances & Mason Merrill  

“If man were meant to be naked, he would have been born naked” –Oscar Wilde

Self Image

“No one – not one single person in the whole world!- should ever look in the mirror and think “this body is not acceptable to be seen nude.” — Steve @ anaturistfamily.com

“After my morning in the buff, I’m calling BS on “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Going naked with three strangers showed me that beauty is entirely mine to own.”—Jo Stanley

“Nakedness should never be discouraged…the very fact that the law does not permit exposure of certain sex organs is bound to give children a warped attitude toward the human body.”—A.S.Neill

“Conversely, getting naked was the thing that made me realize I am more than a sum of my parts and that no one will ever put me under the micro-scope I’d applied to myself.”—Amy Nickell 

“The truest you can be is taking off those clothes.”—Dacher Keltner

“Naturism offers a way of being that dares to suggest that who we are without any additions or covering up is all we need to be.”—Philip Carr-Gomm  

“Our genitals are neither vulgar or shameful, but the way we have been taught has made us subconsciously feel uneasy about the entire matter.” —Dennis Craig Smith, Naked Fear  

“Body image and the shame for it is a time honored way to sell all sorts of products. It’s insane, but it’s hard to break. When you do break free, it’s like a ton of chains have fallen off your shoulders.”  —Name Withheld  

“For girls especially, there is so much pressure in our society to be a perfect size. As a result, there is a whole generation of people killing themselves to meet a standard that is impossible. Part of living a naturist lifestyle is accepting your body and regaining a normal body image.”-Nicky Hoffman   

“The path to body acceptance is quickly accomplished —and is fun. Since nudity is our natural state, so is body acceptance our natural state. We are born with it and are returning to it; and since we have already been there, there is nothing new to learn. It is simply a remembering of something we’ve already experienced and is accomplished with great joy and freedom— and a sense of returning home.” —Daniel Ziegler  

“Why would anyone want to teach their children their bodies are disgusting, unacceptable and offensive to even look at? Why would anyone want to teach their children self shame, self disgust and to despise their body or any one else’s body? Why would anyone set a bad example to their children by having a prejudicial bigotry against another group of people?” —Unknown

“Here I am! Naked and unafraid! You don’t even have to love me, but is it so much to ask you to simply co-exist?” —Dan Carlson  

“In the world of textiles, we are constantly being bombarded by Madison Avenue and the advertising industry with messages of how we are to look, act, dress, behave, and feel, and it is implied that if we don’t live up to these expectations, I.e. look or dress or act or feel a certain way, there is something wrong with us. We begin to compare ourselves with the models on the screen rather than real people, and we begin to not like ourselves, believing that only the flawless deserve a high measure of self-esteem.” —Daniel Ziegler  

“For someone to tell me – especially the government – that I have to wear clothes, they’re telling me that I have to be ashamed of myself. Government is mandating that people shame themselves.” —Dan Speers  

“To be naked is to be oneself.” —John Berger, ‘Ways of Seeing’   

“Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity.” —Dr. Lee Salk, Psychiatrist  

“I like it here. When I go to the other swimming pools they all look at my legs. When I come here they look at me.” —12 year old girl with Cerebral Palsy concerning a naturist swim

Religion & Christianity

“God chose the penis to be a sign of the Old Covenant, which He established with Abraham.” —Michael A.Kowalewski.  

“Hiding the body is symptomatic of the soul’s need to hide from God.” —Wayne Olson

“Christians have been partly responsible for this in their attempts to control people’s sexual expression and thereby actually increasing the sexualization of the human body. Clothing actually does nothing to suppress lust and often accentuates it.” —Bob Horrocks 

“To put a loincloth on what God allowed to be stripped off is a sign of our own fears regarding spiritual nakedness.”—Michael A.Kowalewski  

“When sermons teach that [Bathsheba’s] beauty caused King David’s lust, they expound not the words of Scripture but the minds of preachers.” —David L. Hatton

“Oddly enough, when you realize that you actually do have permission before God to see a naked body, it rather loses its mystique and emotional power in your life” —Matthew Neal, The Biblical Naturist http://thebiblicalnaturist.blogspot.com  

“Christians have fallen into the trap of equating nakedness with sin alongside a culture which uses intimately revealing clothing and nakedness to entice and seduce. Such a heady combination has created an unhealthy and unbiblical attitude to the human body.” —Bob Horrocks 

“If uncovered and left that way for periods of time while the mind is kept busy thinking about common life and work, pretty soon the nakedness looses it’s lust appeal —Name Withheld  

“When people teach that the human body is dirty or obscene, it creates fertile ground for pornography. This is why porn addiction is so strong in our society, even among Christians. Our culture is inundated with a sexualized view of the body. I’m sorry to say that the church has been a key player in spreading that idea.” —David L. Hatton 

“Reptiles hide their genitalia to the extent you have to use invasive equipment to figure out if they are male or female. Isn’t it odd that the serpent, the reptile we associate with what God turned Satan into after his garden of Eden assault, is an animal that has no external sex identification?” —Name Withheld  

“When God first asked, “Who told you that you were naked?” it was apparently Satan who had told them this, but now it is missionaries who carry Satan’s message for him telling unaware people around the world that they are naked… For many cultures, which did not previously have a sexually perverted perception of the body, Christians have manufactured indecency where it never before existed…” —Aaron Frost 

“What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!” —Henry David Thoreau, Journals  

“Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.” —Thomas Fuller  

“How is it possible for the human body, which was created in the image of god, to be offensive to anybody? Satan would love to see God’s greatest creation be considered offensive.” —Cannot locate reference.  

“Forcing others to wear clothes because we cannot control our own lust, is abuse of others.”  

“Fig leaves belong on trees, not people.” —Corky Stanton

Modesty 

“The convention mis-called “modesty” has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature an reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anybody’s whim— anybody’s diseased caprice.” —Mark Twain 

“Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.” —John Kenneth Galbraith

“Adam & Eve entered the world naked and unashamed— naked and pure-minded. And no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed and clean in mind. They have entered it modest. They had to acquire immodesty in the soiled mind; there was no other way to get it. A Christian mother’s first duty is to soil her child’s mind, and she does not neglect it.” —Misplaced My Reference  

“Man is the sole animal whose nudity offends his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.” —Montaigne, 1533-1592 

“What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?” —Michaelangelo  

“Furthermore, because God created it, “The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve its splendor and its beauty.” —Pope John Paul II

Clothing

“Complete nudity, in itself, is not erotic.  “It becomes so when preceded by, or contrasted to a state of dress. In this limited context then, all clothes become somewhat immoral if we define immortality as inciting sexual interest. Habitual nakedness may indeed be capable of elevating man to a higher mental plane…” —Dr. Marylnn J. Horn, “The Second Skin: An Interdisciplinary Study of Clothing” 

“It is an interesting question how far people would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes?” —Henry David Thoreau

“It is the undressing, not the being nude, that is sexually arousing, because it leads the viewer to the association of a sexually intimate experience.” —Marilyn Horn  

“What we try to de-emphasize by pretending to ignore, we actually focus on by avoidance. If our intention is to focus attention away from the genitals and our sexuality, then we are achieving exactly the opposite by demanding they be covered up and denounced.” —Dennis Craig Smith, Naked Fear 

“Something anti-climatic happens when socially nude. Since nothing is left to the imagination, the body loses its power of seduction and the novelty of seeing nudity fizzles out rather quickly.” — Excuse My Nudeness: But happiness isn’t always found where you’re led to believe. by Vongani Nkuna  

“I wasn’t really naked. I simply didn’t have any clothes on.” —Josephine Baker

“In truth there is absolutely nothing to shop for that can improve our appearance, because anything we might buy is not us, but merely something hung or gooped on us.” —Jim Cunningham  

“Those who remain in harmony with the purposes of God cannot sin. Since clothing was invented to protect man from sin, it is of no consequence to those who practice Christian virtue.” —Amalric of Bena  

“Clothing has a dual function: to protect and classify socially.” —Marc https://www.nudeandhappy.com 

“As I’ve said on occasion (and others have essentially said here), clothing is a tool. Carry it around when you have a need; don’t when you don’t. The goal is not so much a clothing free world, in my opinion, as a clothing-optional one, so if you like to wear clothes for whatever reason–just occasionally or all the time–I say that’s quite all right.” —Name Withheld  

“I like me better naked. I don’t mean that in a vain way…When you put clothes on, you immediately put a character on. Clothes are adjectives, they are indicators. When you don’t have any clothes on, it’s raw and you can’t hide.” —Padma Lakshmi  

“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence.” —Thomas Paine, “Common Sense”  

“Is not the most erotic part of the body wherever the clothing affords a glimpse?”  —Roland Barthes  

“Quite All dress is fancy dress, is it not, except our natural skins?” —George Bernard Shaw

“Where artificial modesty is strong the apparel is likely to simulate the genuine sex differences, which are concealed. Thus feminine clothing emphasizes the breasts, the small waist, the broad hips, the small feet. Masculine garb emphasizes broad shoulders, deep chests, powerful arms and stalwart legs. This feature illustrates the hypocrisy of artificial modesty and renders it a hollow mockery, for if it is indeed evil to exhibit the human body, dress should conceal its form as much as possible, instead of revealing and accentuating its sexual traits.”  —Maurice Parmelee 

“Clothes make the man, but nakedness makes the human being.” —Kevin Kearney

“The point is NOT that one must be naked, but that one CAN be naked, and in any context” —Richard Foley

“Is it normal for us keep to our bodies covered in cloth 100% of the time? For some people, walking from the bathroom to the bedroom with no towel handy will cause them extreme panic and stress. Is this healthy? Being naked should just be another form of dress, nothing more, nothing less.” —Unable to locate reference  

“How idiotic civilization is!  Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?” —Katherine Mansfield, 1888-1923, Bliss and Other Stories  

“The finest clothing made is a person’s skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.”  —Mark Twain  

“Warning: Clothing has been shown to cause extreme psychological I dependence. Wear it at your own risk…” —Ben Thornton  

“Wearing clothes is like blindfolding the skin – you can’t feel the world around you as you should.”  —Barry Knell  

“The best dress for walking is nakedness” —Colin Fletcher; the Complete Walker

Obscenity

“Nudity is a state of fact; lewdity, to coin a phrase, is a state of mind” —Paul Outerbridge

“We insult ourselves by calling our bodies obscene, pornographic, lewd, base, dirty, immoral, or evil, and in so doing deny the basic truth of our own existence. Our anatomy is us— and it is none of those terrible things.”— Dennis Craig Smith with Dr. William Sparks

“The trouble with these men who try to adjudicate upon what is moral or immoral in dress is that they really know nothing about the subject.”— George Bernard Shaw  

“Inherent in the condition of laws that prohibit exposure of certain body parts is the circular justification revealed by the following: we know exposure of these parts should be outlawed because showing them is immoral. We know exposing them is immoral because doing so is against the law. Bring into the equation religious dogma based on shame, ignorance and misguided beliefs concerning cause and effect, along with the gullibility of the masses, and you have the major components for maintaining the hysterical elements of what Majorie Heins calls “body phobia”.” —Dennis Craig Smith, Naked Fear  

“The forbidden fruit of mere physical sex differences has come to assume an undue importance, and nakedness regarded as an aphrodisiac subject to pornographic exploitation.” —Frances & Mason Merrill  

“Because naturists don’t think of sex when they undress, because naturists don’t think of sex when they are engaged in wholesome family activities. Because naturists don’t grab a towel for cover, after taking a shower in fear of having others view them in a ‘sex obsessed’ manner? Who are the perverts then?” —Unknown  

“Bathing led to nudity. Nudity led to promiscuity. So believed the colonial lawmakers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Philadelphia was especially strict in those early years. You could be jailed there bathing more than once a month.” —Unknown  

“Some day people will grow up and realize that the only thing vile about human bodies is the small minds some people have developed within them.” —Dick Hein

Prudery

“Prudery, it seems, provides mankind with endless aphrodisiacs; hence, no doubt the reluctance to abandon it.” — C. Willet Cunningham 

“I just think that people are so weird about nudity and the human body. Sex is not bad, naked bodies are not bad, and naked bodies don’t always have to be connected to sex.” —Emily Browning  

“What we need is both freedom from prudery and the freedom to express our feelings” —Margaret Mead  

“Simply put, bodies will remain scandalous or a source of great temptation to you if you are convinced that they are scandalous and a source of great temptation.” —Phil O. (Aching for Eden)  

“Prudery lays the groundwork for a pornographic mindset.” —David L. Hatton  

“Body shame, like prejudice, is not natural. It is learned from others and benefits no one.”   

“The best thing to do would be to designate everywhere as clothing optional, and we could leave little fenced in areas for the prudes to prance around in. Call them “Prudist Camps”. They could peer out of their fences and indulge in their offensive “I’m offended” behavior whenever they saw a natural person walk by, without bothering the rest of us.” —Anonymous  

“I didn’t grow up with a mother telling me what was under my clothes was bad or evil.” —Charlize Theron  

“The main hangup in the world today is hypocrisy and insecurity. If people can’t face up to the fact of other people being naked or smoking pot, or whatever they want to do, then we’re never going to get anywhere. People have got to become aware that it’s none of their business and that being nude is not obscene. Being ourselves is what’s important. If everyone practiced being themselves instead of pretending to be what they aren’t, there would be peace.” —John Lennon

Dichotomies 

“We alternately think of nudity as a perversion and a state of innocence. Why is our response so contradictory and why is nudity treated so differently in different contexts?”—Ruth Barcan  

“If nakedness is so wicked, why do we place it prominently in our art?” —Unknown to Me  

“We see ourselves positioned between Puritanism on the right and pornography on the left—the will to exploit the human body on one side, and the anxious need to suppress the human body on the other”—Lee Baxandall  

“To paraphrase McWilliams: modesty concerning the body makes no sense at all. Feeling shame about what you have when everyone has one as well is an affront to logic, common sense and the human struggle to understand ourselves.” — Dennis Craig Smith, Naked Fear  

“It makes no more sense to compulsively cover body parts because someone might look and lust, than it does to compulsively cover bakery showcases lest patrons look and indulge gluttonous thoughts. God’s way is always truth, and never deceit.” —Jim Cunningham 

Objectification

“To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen by others and yet NOT recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.(THE SIGHT OF IT AS AN OBJECT STIMULATES THE USE OF IT AS AN OBJECT.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display, To be naked  is to be without disguises.” — John Berger 

“If you are used to seeing people naked, you don’t give much thought about appearances.” —Sylva Sternkopf

“Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguise. To be on display is to have the surface of one’s own skin … turned into a disguise …The nude is condemned to never being naked.” —John Berger  

“If anything “objectifies” the human form, it is a denunciation of the Nude in the act of artistic expression, since art celebrates life”—Dennis Craig Smith

“The universal or widespread practice of nudity would involve the obliteration to a large extent of class and caste distinctions. It would mean more democracy and individual freedom through the disappearance of many oppressive conventional, moral and legal restrictions. It would restore to the body the importance and dignity to which it is entitled.” —Maurice Parmelee  

“By baring it all, it makes it easier to see not just a body, but the individual. —Sylva Sternkopf  

“I’m a naturist at heart,” she says, “I love being on beaches where everyone is naked. Ugly young people, beautiful old people, whatever. It’s so unsexual and so liberating…” —Dame Helen Mirren.

Morality

“Nudity, therefore, may be welcomed as a contribution to morality by with no need for worry lest it makes us too good for our own happiness. The abandonment of our traditional prudery regarding the naked body would bring the natural instincts of man into better harmony with the requirements of civilized society. He would be healthier mentally, his behavior could improve, and his joy of life would be increased immeasurably.” —Frances and Mason Merrill

Anti-nudity laws are very much like the {previous} prohibitions against alcohol, the Merrill’s argue; both produce the exact opposite of their intended effects. Nudity should be allowed instead as a path to higher morality. —N Magazine 40.3, 2021 pg 7 

“Nudeness is truth, it is beauty, it is art. Therefore it can never be vulgar; it can never be immoral. I would not wear my clothes, if it were not for their warmth. My body is the temple of my art.” —Isadora Duncan 

“Complete nudity in itself is not erotic. It becomes so only when preceded by or contrasted to a state of dress. In this limited context then, all clothes become somewhat immoral … Habitual nakedness may indeed be capable of elevating man to a higher mental plane.” —Lucy Irvine  

“Our aim is the healthy mind in the healthy body,” Boone said and I had the feeling he’d said it many times before. “We aim to make nudism not merely a fad, but a new social practice. We believe nudism can rid the world of sex ignorance and prudery by making the human body familiar and accepted without eroticism.   “People ask us why we’re organized, why we don’t just practice nudism as individuals. Well, sir, we believe in this thing, we want it extended and legalized in public places, not merely in such hidden spots as this.” —Rev. Illsey Boone  

“A child who has never been allowed to see his parents and brothers and sisters naked sees nudity as something shocking.” —Dr. Helga Fleischhauer-Hardt  

“Walk Nude, and people won’t need to undress you with their eyes.” —Unknown

“Are we so narrow minded that we show war, murder, rape, etc. on TV, but we do not allow to show one of the most wonderful creations (the human body) in its natural form.” —Mario Roman  

The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex.” —Lord Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

“To be offended by the visual appearance of another person is prejudice, akin to racism. The right to exist, uncovered, should hold precedence over the right not to view this, for the objection is irrational.” —Terri Webb  

“In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments outraged …” —Lord Bertrand Russel

Enjoyment

“There’s something joyous about [naturism] and I urge everyone to try it … If you can’t get your kicks in that incredibly innocent, joyful way, then the world is not a good place. —Kate Humble  

“Why does one want to go naked? Good god, what an impertinent question! Why does one want to study a sunrise, listen to a thunderstorm, eat a vine-ripened tomato, smell the hair of someone he loves, or hug a dog?” —Bare in Mind, May, 1974  

“I’d go somewhere where no one spoke. I would take a stack of books up to my hips, and I’d read nonstop. And I’d be reading naked.” —Linda Hamilton 

Kevin Bacon confesses he likes to cut a little footloose at home with his family every now and then — naked. “Not when the nanny is around,” he says. “But I will with my wife and kids.” Why? “There’s something therapeutic about nudity … Take away the Gucci or Levi’s and we’re all the same.” —Style Magazine

Freedom 

“I preach freedom of the mind through freedom of the body …” —Isadora Duncan 

“When I free my body from its clothes, from all their buttons, belts and laces, it seems to me that my soul takes a deeper, freer breath.” —August Strindberg 

“I took off my clothes to dance because I felt the rhythm and freedom of my body better that way.” —Isadora Duncan   

“Forcing Americans to always wear clothing while swimming or sunbathing even in designated or secluded areas is as bad as forcing women to always wear burkhas.” —Corky Stanton – Founder ClothesFree International.

“To some, the freedom to be naked if you want may seem a frivolous issue to explore in any depth during our perilous times. But these are rarified times times as well, a time when all things are coming to light.” —Stuart Ward

“The freest people I know are those who have the least to hide, defend or protect. Naked is powerful.” —Alan Cohen 

“Sometimes I like to run naked in the moonlight and the wind, on a little trail behind out house, when the honeysuckle blooms. It’s a feeling of freedom, so close to God and nature.” —Dolly Parton 

“The girl with dark hair was coming towards him across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With all its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole [oppressive] culture, a whole system of thought.” —George Orwell, 1984  

“Nakedness means freedom, and although dancing on a sun-kissed hillside with shorts on seems pretty similar to dancing with shorts off, there is all the difference in the world. It is as if your clothes take on the weight of your worries and concerns – they come to embody your defenses against the world, and if you can feel confident enough and safe enough, then taking them off evokes a powerful sense of liberation, of joy and freedom; and more than that – of innocence and of openness to the world.” —Philip Carr-Gomm, ‘The Druid Way’  

“Don’t let those who have body negative values define what is and what is not acceptable. Seize your freedom and restore your dignity!” —BodyFreedom.org  

“Sure, some people might believe they are offended by nude bathers, but, if you never encounter anything that offends you in your community, you are not living in a free society.” —Corky Stanton – Founder ClothesFree International. 

“When I free my body from its clothes, from all their buttons, belts, and laces, it seems to me that my soul takes a deeper, freer breath.” —August Strindberg  

“We find that relaxing with clothes off at Elysium Fields [Naturist Resort] is a great tension reliever, for ourselves and our kids too.”—Lynn Redgrave

Vulnerability

“Nudism, in my mind, is sort of like the ultimate display of vulnerability between people. It is, as has been noted, actually opposite of exhibitionism as opposed to being related to it. Of course, there are some nudists who are exhibitionists, but they are to be pitied for missing for the point, I think.” —Name Withheld 

“Naked is the best disguise.” —Jeanette Winterson 

“[Being] naked out of doors and in the water [restores] my sense of blissful innocence. It takes me back to that place of my almost forgotten childhood, where I got to run around undressed without anyone telling me I had to cover up or be embarrassed.” —Elizabeth Rosner

“[When] one is nude, your senses are heightened … You become open to the universe, not only physically, but emotionally, unprotected, unmasked. It may be symbolic of allowing the Divine and the World to see you as you really are.” —Alkemie Jane 

“[T]o undress is to expose our story. When someone has the courage to stand truly naked before us, the courage to share that story, something deep within us has the potential to be unveiled too.” —Maria Ede-Weaving (quoted by Philip Carr-Gomm)  

“I am convinced that there is an intimacy that we are missing out on walking around in our clothes. It is an intimacy so deep that we don’t even miss it until you experience it. But it is there buried deep in our core waiting for us to come home…” —Mrs. Phil (Aching for Eden https://achingforeden.wordpress.com/2021/02/13/instant-family/ )

“The Britons (say historians) were naked, civilized men, learned, studious, abstruse in thought and contemplation; naked, simple, plain in their acts and manners; wiser than after ages…”  —William Blake, in a review of his own lost picture ‘The Ancient Britons’

In Nature

“In terms of deep reverence, being naked allows us to feel more acutely the relationship with the breeze, the wind, the skies, the light and the dark  … the fullness of the natural world, and so encourages a richer, more genuinely felt interaction.” — Emma Restall Orr

“There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body.” —Robert Henri

“The woods don’t mind if I strip naked.” —Marty Rubin  

“[Being] naked out of doors and in the water [restores] my sense of blissful innocence. It takes me back to that place of my almost forgotten childhood, where I got to run around undressed without anyone telling me I had to cover up or be embarrassed.” —Elizabeth Rosner  

“I come from a country where you don’t wear clothes most of the year. Nudity is the most natural state. I was born nude and I hope to be buried nude.” —Elle MacPherson, Australian model and actress.

“Apparently it cannot be repeated to often the ideal of the nudist is not a “ return to nature,” in the sense of the wholesale scrapping of modern civilization; indeed it is not even an immediate sloughing of all its garments. It is merely the correcting or counteracting of some of civilization’s evils through the laying aside of clothes, not when the latter are useful, but when they are detrimental.” —Frances & Mason Merrill

“My favorite thing is to be naked, which is why I always live in remote areas. My ideal is to wake in the morning and run around the meadows naked. I think it’s a good idea to live in harmony with nature.” —Daryl Hannah  

“I like to run down to the beach and have a little swim in the nude in the morning.” —former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara  

“Be glad, my merry friends, and let the warm sunlight heat now heart and limb! Cast off these cold rags! Run naked on the grass, while Tom goes a-hunting!” —Tom Bombadil in J.R.R.Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’  

“The body seems to feel beauty when exposed to it as it feels the campfire or sunshine, entering not by the eyes alone, but equally through all one’s flesh like radiant heat, making a passionate ecstatic pleasure glow not explainable.” —John Muir, founder of The Sierra Club  

“Human beings to me are as much a part of nature as trees or birds, and the unclothed body expresses this belongingness directly and powerfully.” —Wynn Bullock   

“We say ‘nakedness is natural’, but have we begun to think through all that means? It is so basic. A human being is an innocent part of nature. Our civilization has distorted this universal quality that allows us to feel at home in our skin. Other animals have coats that they accept, but the human race has yet to come to terms with being nude.” —Ruth Bernhard   

“We have come into the world naked, and all the animals are naked, why should man hide his body behind clothes?” —Osho 

“With a little inner pirouette of excitement I realized just how much there was to look forward to tomorrow. The thought of being all day naked in the sun was delicious enough in itself, but there was the whole of our new world to explore.” —Lucy Irvine, Castaway  

“I just love having no clothes on outside, and the only time to do that is when the sun’s shining. It’s a wonderful sensation to not have any clothes on.” —P.J. Harvey, singer.  

“Take off your shoes and feel the grass beneath your feet. Then take off your clothes and feel the sun and the air and the world.” —Barry Knell

Humor 

Worf: Captain, I do not think it is appropriate for a Starfleet officer to appear … naked.  Picard: Oh, come now! A big, handsome, strapping fellow like you? What can you be afraid of? —StarTrek The Next Generation  

“You have never seen a person with clothes on? Oh well, you haven’t lost anything.” —Mark Twain  

“I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, : I am mad for it to be in contact with me.” —Walt Whitman: From Song of Myself (1855)

People who walk around in the rain naked don’t get wet, they get washed. —Hone Tuwhare   

“Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! –ah if poor, sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once more! Is not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability that is indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent. Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is–nor what faith or art or health really is.” —Walt Whitman, Specimen Day  

“The church says: The body is a sin. Science says: The body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The body says: I am a fiesta.” —Eduardo Galeano, “Windows on the World”

“When wearing only a smile – be sure to smile a lot.” —Unknown  

“I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.” —Shelley Winters  

“I simply can’t understand Why swimsuits are in such demand They’re soggy and damp, Bind like a clamp, And hold about three pounds of sand!” —D.R. Benson  

“Nudism is not a spectator sport. We all have the equipment and everyone can play.” —Jim C. Cunningham  

“Not all the Greek runners in the original Olympics were totally naked. Some wore shoes.” —Mark Twain

“Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism.” —John Updike  

“There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth.” —F.H.Bradley  

“Just because I’m naked doesn’t mean you have to be.” —Richard Foley

Work 

“It is important to work naked from the start, so it becometh as second nature, and no thought of ‘I have no clothes’ shall ever intrude and take your attention from the work.” —Gerald Gardner  

Brad Pitt was asked if he enjoyed starring as the half-naked Greek demi-god Achilles in the film Troy. Pitt said, “I’m naked all the time at home.”  

“If possible, compute in the nude.” —From the book “Supercharging MS-Dos” by Microsoft Press, 3rd Ed., pg. 393, under the section “Static Electricity Is A Killer”  

“On the fourth day of telecommuting, I realized that clothes are totally unnecessary” —Dilbert

Delusions  

“The Body Delusions: Ten Misconceptions About Our Physical Selves 

1. Nakedness in the flesh is ungodly and immoral
2. Without clothes a person is incomplete
3. Nakedness in the flesh is lewd, in art aesthetic
4. Nakedness in the flesh always produces sexual arousal
5. The genitals are vulgar and shameful
6. Women’s breasts are indecent
7. The sex act is nature but obscene
8. Sexual pleasure is lascivious and morally suspect
9. Since primitives are beneath us, their nakedness is irrelevant to the concept of indecency
10. Nakedness during infancy is our and sublime. After that obscene.”
—Dennis Craig Smith, Naked Fear