Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

this is a book about something

Jesus was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or Lord

You've no idea how good an old joke sounds when you take it out again after a rest of five or six hundred years.

The claim to equality, outside of the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior.

A sign of a culture that has lost its faith - Moral collapse follows upon spiritual collapse.

The Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.