Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.
If the Bible and my brain are both the work of the same infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree?
Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.
Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.
It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death – that is heroism.
Truth is the mother of joy. Truth civilizes, ennobles and purifies. The grandest ambition that can enter the soul is to know the truth.
Too much doubt is better than too much credulity.
Nothing could be more dangerous to the existence of this Republic than to introduce religion into politics.
This is my creed: Happiness is the only good; reason the only torch; justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.
The careful reader of the New Testament will find three Christs described: – One who wished to preserve Judaism – one who wished to reform it, and one who built a system of his own.
Reason is the light, the sun of the brain. It is the compass of the mind, the ever-constant Northern Star, the mountain peak that lifts itself above all clouds.
No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.
The Church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon. And I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.
Religion is one of the phases of thought through which the world is passing.
We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves.
All I have to say is, Love one another – that is the height of all philosophy. It is beyond all religions. It is the secret of joy – the fountain of Perpetual Youth – the only rainbow on life’s dark cloud.
The priests of one religion never credit the miracles of another religion. Is this because priests instinctively know priests?
It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables.
It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or worship, or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in abhorrence and contempt.