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.
It is labor that has made the world a fit habitation for the human race.
I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, – blown and flared by passion’s storm, – and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.
The ideas of right and wrong change with the experience of the race, and this change is wrought by the gradual ascertaining of consequences – of results.
Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.
Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God.
To avoid pain we must know the conditions of health. For the accomplishment of this end we must rely upon investigation instead of faith, upon labor in place of prayer. Most misery is produced by ignorance. Passions sow the seeds of pain.
Everyone should be taught the nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity.