Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers: It is the only prayer that deserves an answer – good, honest, noble work.
There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.
I have not the slightest confidence in ‘spiritual manifestations.’
The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.
The more false we destroy, the more room there will be for the true.
I am going to put the Bible out of business.
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart-the best brain.
Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
I believe in the religion of reason – the gospel of this world; in the development of the mind, in the accumulation of intellectual wealth, to the end that man may free himself from superstitious fear, to the end that he may take advantage of the forces of nature to feed and clothe the world.
They say: Belief is important. I say: No, actions are important. Judge by deed, not by creed.
Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne.
Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? Yes, we all know it. That is the time all religions tell the truth – each of the other.
Do right, not to deny yourself but because you love yourself and because you love others.
In the search for truth – that everything in nature seems to hide – man needs the assistance of all his faculties. All the senses should be awake.
What has religion to do with facts? Nothing.
I will follow my logic, no matter where it goes, after it has consulted with my heart. If you ever come to a conclusion without calling the heart in, you will come to a bad conclusion.
To be like other people is to be unlike ourselves.
Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of progress, the enemy of education and the assassin of freedom.
I am not so much for the freedom of religion as I am for the religion of freedom.
The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness.