If all the animals and man had been evolved in this ascendant manner, then there had been no first parents, no Eden, and no Fall. And if there had been no fall, then the entire historical fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin and the reason for an atonement ... collapsed like a house of cards.

Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.

The State's your mother, your father, the totality of your interests. No discipline can be too severe for the man that denies thatby word or deed.

Let us get together with other people of our sort and make over the world into a great world-civilization that will enable us to realize the promises and avoid the dangers of this new time.

[A novel by Henry James] is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently place, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string.

Everywhere in the world there are ignorance and prejudice, but the greatest complex of these, with the most extensive prestige and the most intimate entanglement with traditional institutions, is the Roman Catholic Church.

Every one of these hundreds of millions of human beings is in some form seeking happiness.... Not one is altogether noble nor altogether trustworthy nor altogether consistent; and not one is altogether vile.... Not a single one but has at some time wept.