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.
Lincoln was not a type. He stands alone – no ancestors, no fellows, no successors.
Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, “Halt!” A creed is the ignorant Past bulling the enlightened Present.
Memory is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift.
I am anxious to give away information, for it is only by giving it away that you can keep it. When you have told it, you remember it. It is with information as it is with liberty, the only way to be dead sure of it is to give it to other people.
Whoever saw an angel barefooted?
It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius.
Hope is the consolation of the world.