The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.

A miracle is the badge and brand of fraud. ... No intelligent, honest man ever pretended to perform a miracle, and never will.

Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.

Eternal punishment must be eternal cruelty, and I do not see how any man, unless he has the brain of an idiot, or the heart of a wild beast, can believe in eternal punishment.

And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?

We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.

One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.