If I go to heaven I want to take my reason with me.

If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce.

At thirty most men have prejudices rather than opinions-that is to say, rather than judgments-and few men have lived to be sixty without materially modifying the opinions they held at thirty.

All religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. Shakespeare is my bible, Burns my hymn-book.

If a man wishes to have God recognized in the constitution of our country, let him read the history of the Inquisition, and let him remember that hundreds of millions of men, women, and children have been sacrificed to placate the wrath, or win the approbation of this god.

Everyone should be taught the nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity.

He who commends the brutalities of the past, sows the seeds of future crimes.