My only wish isto transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are half animal, half angel into persons, into whole persons.

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.

What yesterday was still religion is no longer such today; and what today is atheism, tomorrow will be religion.

To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred.

As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate.

He only is a true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being - for example, love, wisdom and justice - are nothing.

Man created God in his own image.