The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.
If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our fellow men. We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife and child and friend.
Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.
The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody.
For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.
For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument.
I would rather live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody but men.
Justice, poised and balanced in eternal calm, will shake from the golden scales in which are weighed the acts of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste: No race, no color, no previous condition, can change the rights of men.
Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves.
The emblem of equal rights. It means free hands, free lips, self- government, and the sovereignty of the individual.
I do not believe in loving enemies; I have pretty hard work to love my friends.
I have had some trouble in regarding evil as having been intended by infinite Goodness.
If there is a God, there should be no slaves.
I have no confidence in any religion that can be demonstrated only to children.
To me, the most obscene word in our language is celibacy.
An infinite personality is an infinite impossibility.
Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an infinite being wants his praise!
If we are immortal, it is a fact of nature, and that fact does not depend on bibles, on Christs, priest, or creeds.
If this religion is true, then there is only one Savior, only one narrow path to life. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other religion.
Now the struggle for life is so sharp, competition is so severe, that few men can succeed who carry a useless burden. The businessmen of our country are compelled to lead temperate lives, otherwise their credit is gone.