"I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not."

"The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself."

"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."

"And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?"

"No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science."

"The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul -- breaking the mental manacles -- getting the brain out of bondage -- giving courage to thought -- filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy."

"Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows."

"Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul."

"A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others."

"The more liberty you give away the more you will have."

"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."

"Brain without heart is far more dangerous than heart withoutbrain."

"The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not."

"Let us forget that we are Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians, or Free-thinkers, and remember only that we are men and women. After all, man and woman are the highest possible titles. All other names belittle us, and show that we have, to a certain extent, given up our individuality, and have consented to wear the collar of authority-that we are followers. Throwing away these names, let us examine these questions not as partisans, but as human beings with hopes and fears in common."

"Whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous."

"The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here."

"Injustice upon earth renders the justice of of heaven impossible."

"Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself."

"Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought."

"Liberty a word without which all other words are vain."

"To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds."

"A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy."

"I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains."

"No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of nature."

"A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the Bible; so that, if the God of Nature did not write the Bible, this God at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this God has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question -- not as to whether the Bible is inspired and not as to whether Jehovah is the real God, but whether there is a God or not."

"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot."

"Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter."

"In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action."

"As long as we can get redress in the courts, as long as the laws shall be honestly administered, as long as honesty and intelligence sit upon the bench, as long as intelligence sits in the chairs of jurors, this country will stand, the law will be enforced, and the law will be respected."

"Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains."

"There can be goodness without much intelligence - but it seems to me that perfect intelligence and perfect goodness must go together."

"Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne."

"Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity."

"Few rich men own their property; their property owns them."

"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 wrong."

"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!"

"I am not much given to profanity, but when I am sorely aggravated and vexed in spirit I declare to you that it comes as such a relief to me, such a solace to my troubled soul, and brings me such Heavenly peace to every now and then allow a word of phrase to escape my lips which can serve me no other earthly purpose, seemingly, other than to render emphatic my otherwise mildly expressed ideas."

"The religionist is a living fossil, embedded in that rock called faith."

"Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms."

"A prayer that must have a cannon behind it better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. Love need not carry knives and revolvers."

"Is it a small thing to quench the flames of hell with the holy tears of pity -- to unbind the martyr from the stake -- break all the chains -- put out the fires of civil war -- stay the sword of the fanatic, and tear the bloody hands of the Church from the white throat of Science? Is it a small thing to make men truly free -- to destroy the dogmas of ignorance, prejudice and power -- the poisoned fables of superstition, and drive from the beautiful face of the earth the fiend of fear?"

"There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing."

"Not one of the learned gentlemen who pretend that the Mosaic laws are filled with justice and intelligence, would live, for a moment, in any country where such laws were in force."

"We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death."

"Roscoe Conkling was a man of superb courage. He not only acted without fear, but he had that fortitude of soul which bears the consequences of the course pursued without complaint."

"There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven."

"Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science."

"For many years I have regarded the Pentateuch simply as a record of a barbarous people, in which are found a great number of the ceremonies of savagery, many absurd and unjust laws, and thousands of ideas inconsistent with known and demonstrated facts. To me it seemed almost a crime to teach that this record was written by inspired men; that slavery, polygamy, wars of conquest and extermination were right, and that there was a time when men could win the approbation of infinite Intelligence, Justice, and Mercy, by violating maidens and by butchering babes."

"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray."

"As man develops, he places a greater value upon his own rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner thing. As he values his own rights, he begins to value the rights of others. And when all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized."