I hate above all things a cross man. What right has he to murder the sunshine of a day? What right has he to assassinate the Joy of life? When you go home, you ought to go like a ray of light-so that it will, even in the night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness.

Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.

In the presence of death I affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world. I would say that much on the subject with my last breath.

The Christians say, that among the ancient Jews, if you committed a crime you had to kill a sheep. Now they say 'charge it.' 'Put it on the slate.' The Savior will pay it. In this way, rascality is sold on credit, and the credit system in morals, as in business, breeds extravagance.

If this religion is true, then there is only one Savior, only one narrow path to life. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other religion.

Our ignorance is God; what we know is science. When we abandon the doctrine that some infinite being created matter and force, and enacted a code of laws for their government ... the real priest will then be, not the mouth-piece of some pretended deity, but the interpreter of nature.

Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy a coffin.