I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.

All should be taught that the highest ambition is to be happy, and to add to the well-being of others; that place and power are not necessary to success; that the desire to acquire great wealth is a kind of insanity. They should be taught that it is a waste of energy, a waste of thought, a waste of life, to acquire what you do not need and what you do not really use for the benefit of yourself or others.

Where is the soul? . . . I refuse to believe anything of that kind without proof. The idea that, as soon as a man's breath leaves his body, the soul flops out like a chicken's head and flies off into space to find a lodgment where there [are] harps and haloes. Too much for me.

If you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing.

Every church that has a standard higher than human welfare is dangerous.

There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women - of free mothers.

There is more real devotional feeling summoned from the temple of the mind by great music than by any sermon ever delivered.