Every one knows that the heavenly bodies move in certain paths in relation to each other with seeming consistency and regularity which we call [physical] law. ... No one attributes freewill or motive to the material world. Is the conduct of man or the other animals any more subject to whim or choice than the action of the planets? ... We know that man's every act is induced by motives that led or urged him here or there; that the sequence of cause and effect runs through the whole universe, and is nowhere more compelling than with man.

I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.

We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

Every thought of pity is like the balm of Gilead to our souls.

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.

No iconoclast can possibly escape the severest criticism.

Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause . . . True courage and manhood come from the consciousness of the right attitude toward the world, the faith in one's purpose, and the sufficiency of one's own approval as a justification for one's own acts.