The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.
No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me.
And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?
Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.
Nothing but truth is immortal.
There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.
Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
Liberty is the breath of progress.
And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach.
In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.
Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know – the Church does neither.
By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think and the right to think wrong.
To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.
With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.
The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead, and every sweet unselfish act is now a perfumed flower.
Meekness is the mask of malice.
All religion is slavery.
The rights of men and women should be equal and sacred-marriage should be a perfect partnership.
The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.
The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called faith.