Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.

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.

Laws have come down to us from old customs and folk-ways based on primitive ideas of man's origin, capacity and responsibility.

I cannot tell and I shall never know how many words of mine might have given birth to cruelty in place of love and kindness and charity.

The truth is always modern and there never comes a time when it is safe to give it voice.

I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor - anybody can do that - but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.

Education was in danger from the source that always hampered it—religious fanaticism.