Which spirit is so empty and blind, that
it cannot recognise the fact, that the foot is more elegant, than the shoe, and the skin is more beautiful, than the garment with which it is clothed?
Michelangelo, Italy
Because of being created by God, the human body can remain naked and uncovered, yet, untouched, still preserves its splendour and beauty.
Pope John Paul II, Poland
To associate a nude body always with the concept of eroticism, is about as intelligent, as to think always of eating in context with the mouth.
Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935), German writer
Actually, you should declare the whole world a "clothing optional" area. Then all people could run around everywhere as they like. For the few "prudish ones", who feel insulted by seeing nude people, you could provide separate camps, in which wearing clothes would be mandatory. And only if a normal person (naturally nude) would approach such a camp close enough, the prudish ones would have once again the opportunity to obsess about their morbid aggression by feeling insulted therefore without becoming a burden to normal people any more.
Anon
Swimwear beats everything in terms of uselessness.
Lorenz Kerscher, Germany
As long as children are not allowed to see naked adults at times, the children must necessarily feel that there is a secret, and when they feel that way, they become irritated and indecent.
Bertrand Russell, mathematician, pedagogue and philosopher, England
in his book Marriage and Morals (1929),
cited from wikiquote on Marriage and Morals, ch. 8, p. 1161).
If people were meant to be nude, they would have been born this way.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish writer
With our clothes, we throw away at the same time all the intentions and considerations of ourselves and enjoy impartially, which is good for us.
Hans W. Fischer, German writer, editor, theatre critic, and translator "Das Schlemmerparadies" [en: "The gourmet's paradise"], [German] Heyne publishing house, of which also the well-known German Author Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935), Germany, has published a recension, using one of his ghostwriter names Peter Panter as the authors' name for the publication in the former German weekly magazine Weltbühne on the 26 January 1922.
Clothes make the man. Without clothes, we are just human beings.
Anon
Prudery is 
a kind of meanness, the worst of all.
Stendhal (1783-1842), French writer
The identification of the gods and man with nature requires nudity.
Alain Daniélou (1907–1994), French historian, intellectual, musicologist, indologist, and hindu
To be ashamed of ones nude body, is blasphemy and disregard of divine creation, for man is modeled to the image of God.
Anon
People who clothe themselves will all go to Hell. For God will ask them at the Last Judgement, "Why have you always hid the crown of my creation, the human body, all your life under clothing?" Have you been so dissatisfied with my work, that you always had to hide it? Go to hell and repent in eternity, because you have not respected my creation on earth." And to the naturists he will say, "Go into Paradise, which you have already sought on earth to live in the nude as in paradise and to praise my creation!"
Helmut Schultze, German naturist
Nudity
is equal with freedom, virtue, truth, and health.
Alain Daniélou (1907–1994), French historian, intellectual, musicologist, indologist, and hindu
Avow your body and do not cover it unnecessarily – for it is you, who is in it.
François Picardin
In the society of nudes, no one is naked.
Jeff Jarvis, professor and blogger of the buzzmachine
If bankers were nude, there would never have been a financial crisis. Nudes act responsibly.
Helmut Schultze, German naturist
The man without a covering is actually the man.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German writer and statesman
Nudity turns you noble, clothes turn you vain.
Helmut Schultze, German naturist
The children Truth and Lie grew up as very close friends. One day, they went swimming nude in the river. Lie first climbed out of the water and decided to put on the clothes of Truth. Lie then suggested to Truth to change clothes. But the naked Truth preferred to stay the way, she was.
A fable from England
160,000 years of homo sapiens = 160,000 years of naturism: The oldest tradition of modern man.
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, physician and psychiatrist
The world is a book with a thousand pages. Whoever lives clothed always, reads only one of them.
From England
I have an indispensable belief in the expressiveness of the human body and a never tiring adoration for the dignity of nudity.
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet, and playwright
The most effective protection of nature is the frailty of man, his works, and his actions, whose effects must sooner or later blast him, because a large part of his present actions are against all natural senses.
And that is, why we naturists live consistent with nature.
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,
For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.
[…]
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Khalil Gibran (1883–1931), Lebanese writer, poet, and visual artist, member of the New York Pen League,
poem Clothes,
in his book The Prophet2)
_______
1) Full cit.:
»The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex… It is good for children to see each other and their parents naked whenever it so happens naturally. There will be a short period, probably at about three years old, when the child is interested in the differences between his father and his mother, and compares them with the differences between himself and his sister, but this period is soon over, and after this he takes no more interest in nudity than in clothes. So long as parents are unwilling to be seen naked by their children, the children will necessarily have a sense that there is a mystery, and having that sense they will become prurient and indecent. There is only one way to avoid indecency, and that is to avoid mystery.«
• Ch. 8, p. 116"
2) Full cit.:
»Clothes
And the weaver said, "Speak to us of Clothes."
And he answered:
"Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,
For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.
Some of you say, 'It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear.'
But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.
And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.
Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.
And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.«
