The old must always make way for the new, and one thing must be built out of the ruins of another. There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone.

...if one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods.

Poor humanity, to saddle the gods with such a responsibility and throw in a vindictive temper. What griefs they hatch for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for our prosperity! This is not piety, this oft-repeated show of bowing a veiled head before a graven image; this bustling to every altar; this kow-towing and prostration on the ground with palms outspread before the shrines of the gods; this deluging of vow on vow. True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind.

Tis pleasant to stand on shore and watch others labouring in a stormy sea.

Look at a man in the midst of doubt & danger and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

Certainly it was no design of the atoms to place themselves in a particular order, nor did they decide what motions each should have. But atoms were struck with blows in many ways and carried along by their own weight from infinite times up to the present. They have been accustomed to move and to meet in all manner of ways. For this reason, it came to pass that being spread abroad through a vast time and trying every sort of combination and motion, at length those come together that produce great things, like earth and sea and sky and the generation of living creatures.