It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.
The greatest superstition now entertained by public men is that hypocrisy is the royal road to success.
When one of your children tells a lie, be honest with him; tell him that you have told hundreds of them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way; that you have tried it. Tell him as the man did in Maine when his boy left home: “John, honesty is the best policy; I have tried both.”
I do not believe in loving enemies; I have pretty hard work to love my friends. Neither do I believe in revenge. No man can afford to keep the viper of revenge in his heart. But I believe in justice, in self-defense.
Intellectual liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine of the mind, and without it, the world is a prison, the universe is a dungeon.
The God of hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A god who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved; cursed, not worshipped. A heaven presided over by such a god must be below the meanest hell.
The object of all education should be to increase the usefulness of man – usefulness to himself and others.
The closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.
When struck on one cheek to turn the other, is really joining a conspiracy to secure the triumph of brutality. To agree not to resist evil is to become an accomplice of all injustice.
No man should kill himself as long as he can be of the least use to anybody, and if you cannot find some person that you are willing to do something for, find a good dog and take care of him. You have no idea how much better you will feel.
To the wise man, to the wise nation, the mistakes of the past are the torches of the present.
I cannot see why we should expect an infinite God to do better in another world than he does in this.
There is in all artists a little of the vagabond.
If the reason I give is a good one, you will act upon it. If it is a bad one I cannot make it better by piling epithet upon epithet. There is no logic in abuse; there is no argument in an epithet.
Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music.
The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn-the less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything.
There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help.
The undressed is vulgar; the nude is pure, and the well-dressed tainted.
The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings.
God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep company with such a god.