Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in god. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed.

The myth of hell represents all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable.

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.

I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.

If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant.

The greatest superstition now entertained by public men is that hypocrisy is the royal road to success.

Blasphemy is what an old dogma screams at a new truth.