When a fact can be demonstrated, force is unnecessary; when it cannot be demonstrated, force is infamous.
Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning.
Above all things, one should maintain his self-respect, and there is but one way to do that, and that is to live in accordance with your highest ideal.
If the property belongs to God he is able to pay the tax.
As long as woman regards the Bible as the charter of her rights, she will be the slave of man. The bible was not written by a woman. Within its leaves there is nothing but humiliation and shame for her.
Wait until the world is free before you write a creed. In this creed there will be but one word – Liberty.
Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything. Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.
Great virtues may draw attention from defects, they cannot sanctify them. A pebble surrounded by diamonds remains a common stone, and a diamond surrounded by pebbles is still a gem.
I admit that books were voted in and out, and that the Bible was finally formed in accordance with a vote.
If we have the right to use our reason, we certainly have the right to act in accordance with it, and no god can have the right to punish us for such action.
It is incredible that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation. It is incredible that the more brain you have the less your chance is. There can be no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances beyond what it is to-day, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.
If the Bible is true, it needs no inspiration, and – if not true, inspiration can do it no good.
The credulity of the church is decreasing, and the most marvelous miracles are not either ‘explained,’ or allowed to take refuge behind the mistakes of the translators, or hide in the drapery of allegory.
An infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.
No God can put a man in hell in another world, who has made a little heaven in this. God cannot make a man miserable if that man has made somebody else happy.
At thirty most men have prejudices rather than opinions-that is to say, rather than judgments-and few men have lived to be sixty without materially modifying the opinions they held at thirty.
Take the word Liberty from human speech and all the other words become poor, withered, meaningless sounds – but with that word realized – with that word understood, the world becomes a paradise.
The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts.
Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrines of the weak.
You cannot be so poor that you cannot help somebody.