If, with all the time at my disposal, with all the wealth of the resources of this vast universe, to do with as I will, I could not produce a better scheme of life than now prevails, I would be ashamed of my efforts and consider my work a humiliating failure.
On every hand there seems to be design to defeat design. If God created man – if he is the father of us all, why did he make the criminals, the insane, the deformed and idiotic? Should the mother, who clasps to her breast an idiot child, thank God?
I read the other day an account of a meeting between John Knox and John Calvin. Imagine a dialogue between a pestilence and a famine!
Strange but true: those who have loved God most have loved men least.
Twenty years after the death of Luther there were more Catholics than when he was born. And twenty years after the death of Voltaire there were millions less than when he was born.
Epithets are not arguments. Abuse does not persuade.
The book, called the Bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! This is the book they wish to be recognized in our Constitution as the source of all authority and justice!
The churches have no confidence in each other. Why? Because they are acquainted with each other.
They knew no better, but I do not propose to follow the example of a barbarian because he was honestly a barbarian.
The moment you introduce a despotism in the world of thought, you succeed in making hypocrites – and you get in such a position that you never know what your neighbor thinks.
Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin; and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task.
The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread – a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal.
The old lady who said there must be a devil, else how could they make pictures that looked exactly like him, reasoned like a trained theologian – like a doctor of divinity.
Only the very ignorant are perfectly satisfied that they know. To the common man the great problems are easy. He has no trouble in accounting for the universe. He can tell you the origin and destiny of man and the why and wherefore of things.
The man who invented the telescope found out more about heaven than the closed eyes of prayer ever discovered.
It is grander to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed.
Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other impoverishes; the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed.
Intelligence is the only moral guide.
There are some truths, however, that we should never forget: Superstition has always been the relentless enemy of science; faith has been a hater of demonstration; hypocrisy has been sincere only in its dread of truth, and all religions are inconsistent with mental freedom.
He who commends the brutalities of the past, sows the seeds of future crimes.