I am not myself in any degree ashamed of having changed my opinions.

One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.