The most human thing we can do is comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Religious doctrines do not and clearly cannot be adopted as the criminal code of a state.

Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man.

The really intelligent are as abnormal as the defective. The great masses of men are rather mediocre, and those above and below are exceptions.

If there is a soul, what is it, and where did it come from, and where does it go? Can anyone who is guided by his reason possibly imagine a soul independent of a body, or the place of its residence, or the character of it, or anything concerning it? If man is justified in any belief or disbelief on any subject, he is warranted in the disbelief in a soul. Not one scrap of evidence exists to prove any such impossible thing.

Physical deformity, calls forth our charity. But the infinite misfortune of moral deformity calls forth nothing but hatred and vengeance.

Everything serious that he says is a joke and everything humorous that he says is dead serious.