Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world, and love is the only thing that will pay ten percent to both borrower and lender.
Every cradle asks us, Whence? and every coffin, Whither? The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Jehovah was not a moral god. He had all the vices and he lacked all the virtues. He generally carried out all his threats, but he never faithfully kept a promise.
The man who finds a truth lights a torch.
Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt.
Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter.
Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.
Age after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and nowhere, in all the annals of mankind, has any god succored the oppressed.
Every child should be taught that useful work is worship and that intelligent labor is the highest form of prayer.
Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.
Sacred are the lips from which has issued only truth.
They knew that it was necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.
Many people think they have religion when they are troubled with dyspepsia.
I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.
Temptations are as thick as the leaves of the forest, and no one can be out of the reach of temptation unless he is dead. The great thing is to make people intelligent enough and strong enough, not to keep away from temptation, but to resist it.
It has always seemed to me that a being coming from another world, with a message of infinite importance to mankind, should at least have verified that message by his own signature. Is it not wonderful that not one word was written by Christ?
All religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. Shakespeare is my bible, Burns my hymn-book.
Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!