Sometime, it will be found that people can be changed only by changing their surroundings. It is alleged that, at least ninety-five percent of the criminals transported from England to Australia and other penal colonies, became good and useful citizens in a new world.
Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power.
Language is not subtle enough, tender enough, to express all that we feel; and when language fails, the highest and deepest longings are translated into music. Music is the sunshine – the climate – of the soul, and it floods the heart with a perfect June.
I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony.
There is more real devotional feeling summoned from the temple of the mind by great music than by any sermon ever delivered.
The only reason why we wish to exchange thoughts is that we are different. If we were all the same, we would die dumb. No thought would be expressed after we found that our thoughts were precisely alike. We differ-our thoughts are different. Therefore the commerse that we call conversation.
Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul.
The good part of Christmas is not always Christian – it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, natural.
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
Death is only perfect rest.
Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he should have used it.
Character survives; goodness lives; love is immortal.
The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes – more important than gold or houses or lands – more important than art or science – more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.
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.