The existence of very pious feelings, in conjunction with intolerance, cruelty, and selfish policy, has never ceased to surprise and perplex those who have viewed it calmly from a distance. ... It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world. What destruction of the beautiful monuments of past ages, what waste of life, what disturbance of domestic and social happiness, what perverted feelings, what blighted hearts, have always marked its baneful progress!

our republican ideas cannot be consistently carried out while women are excluded from any share in the government. ... Any class of human beings to whom a position of perpetual subordination is assigned, however much they may be petted and flattered, must inevitably be dwarfed, morally and intellectually.

Prejudices of all kinds have their strongest holds in the minds of the vulgar and the ignorant.

I will work in my own way, according to the light that is in me.

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.

If we really believed that those who are gone from us were as truly alive as ourselves, we could not invest the subject with such awful depth of gloom as we do. If we could imbue our children with distinct faith in immortality, we should never speak of people as dead, but passed into another world. We should speak of the body as a cast-off garment, which the wearer had outgrown; consecrated indeed by the beloved being that used it for a season, but of no value within itself.

I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln. With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continually.