Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver.
He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He is the gentlest memory of our world.
My principal objections to orthodox religion are two: slavery here and hell hereafter.
I would rather smoke one cigar than hear two sermons.
Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called ‘natural’ man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation.
Commerce is the great civilizer.
If priests had not been fond of mutton, lambs never would have been sacrified to god. Nothing was ever carried to the temple that the priest could not use, and it always happened that god wanted what his agents liked.
One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.
If Jehovah cannot support his religion without going into partnership with a State Legislature, I think he ought to give it up.
Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud.
I would have all the professors in colleges, all the teachers in schools of every kind, including those in Sunday schools, agree that they would teach only what they know, that they would not palm off guesses as demonstrated truths.
The first duty of man is to support himself – to see to it that he does not become a burden. His next duty is to help others if he has a surplus, and if he really believes they deserve to be helped.
Even in the business of corporations honesty is the best policy, and the companies that have acted in accordance with the highest standard, other things being equal, have reaped the richest harvest.
Love your friends and be just to your enemies.
If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce.
Is not the history of real civilization the slow and gradual emancipation of the intellect, of the judgment, from the mastery of passion? Is not that man civilized whose reason sits the crowned monarch of his brain – whose passions are his servants?
When passions and appetites are stronger than the intellect, men are savages; when the intellect governs the passions, when the passions are servants, men are civilized. The people need education – facts – philosophy.
As long as a man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school.
Nothing is greater than to break the chains from the bodies of men – nothing nobler than to destroy the phantom of the soul.
Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power.