"There is no slavery but ignorance."

"I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea."

"When all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized."

"The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each other on account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about botany, and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father and mother. It is what people do not know, that they persecute each other about. Science will bring, not a sword, but peace."

"With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate every form of tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty."

"When you go home you ought to go like a ray of light-so that it will, even in the night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness."

"I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men."

"In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous."

"It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead."

"Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself."

"It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey."

"Let us account for all we see by the facts we know. If there are things for which we cannot account, let us wait for light. To account for anything by supernatural agencies is, in fact to say that we do not know. Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature."

"It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions."

"A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie."

"Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows."

"Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result."

"No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me."

"Every religion in the world has denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that they all tell the truth - about others."

"Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself."

"When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then - and not until then - will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher become a real and blessed truth."

"There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences."

"Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come to my grave and truthfully say: 'He who sleeps here never gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind word."

"Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress.Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought.Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin."

"Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State. Above all, the citizens of a free nation should honor the brave and independent man - the man of stainless integrity, of will and intellectual force."

"The theologians dead, knew no more than the theologians now living."

"But those who are incapable ofpitying animals are, as a matter of fact, incapable of pitying men.A physician who would cut a living rabbit in pieces -- laying barethe nerves, denuding them with knives, pulling them out withforceps -- would not hesitate to try experiments with men and womenfor the gratification of his curiosity."

"Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice."

"The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it."

"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..."

"When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism."

"If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone."

"The mechanic, when a wheel refuses to turn, never thinks of dropping on his knees and asking the assistance of some divine power. He knows there is a reason. He knows that something is too large or too small; that there is something wrong with his machine; and he goes to work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or there, until the wheel will turn."

"I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past."

"You have no idea how many men are spoiled by what is called education. For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. If Shakespeare had graduated at Oxford, he might have been a quibbling attorney, or a hypocritical parson."

"The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down."

"So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give."

"When I speak of God, I mean that god who prevented man from putting forth his hand and taking also of the fruit of the tree of life that he might live forever; of that god who multiplied the agonies of woman, increased the weary toil of man, and in his anger drowned a world-of that god whose altars reeked with human blood, who butchered babes, violated maidens, enslaved men and filled the earth with cruelty and crime; of that god who made heaven for the few, hell for the many, and who will gloat forever and ever upon the writhings of the lost and damned."

"I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love's fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne."

"An honest God is the noblest work of man."

"Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand, neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak of truth runs the vine of beauty."

"Nothing but truth is immortal."

"Suppose it should turn out that no such person as Christ ever lived. What harm would that do justice or mercy? Wouldn't the tear of pity be as pure as now, and wouldn't justice, holding aloft her scales, from which she blows even the dust of prejudice, be as noble, as admirable as now? Is it not better to love justice and mercy than to love a name, and when you put a name above justice, above mercy, are you sure that you are benefiting your fellowmen?"

"Belief is not subject to the will. Men think as they must. Children do not, and cannot, believe exactly as they were taught. They are not exactly like their parents. They differ in temperament, in experience, in capacity, in surroundings. And so there is a continual, though almost imperceptible change. There is development, conscious and unconscious growth, and by comparing long periods of time we find that the old has been almost abandoned, almost lost in the new."

"The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart."

"If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not remember. Nothing had ever happened. What did he do? Can you imagine anything more absurd than an infinite intelligence in infinite nothing wasting an eternity?"

"Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God. While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie."

"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences."

"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. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever."

"Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery."

"He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success or the fear of failure - who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only victor."