I believe that labor is a blessing. It never was and never will be a curse. It is a blessed thing to labor for . . . the ones you love. It is a blessed thing to have an object in life - something to do - something to call into play your best thoughts, to develop your faculties and to make you a man.

I will follow my logic, no matter where it goes, after it has consulted with my heart. If you ever come to a conclusion without calling the heart in, you will come to a bad conclusion.

The Church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon. And I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.

The idea that there is a God who rewards and punishes, and who can reward, if he so wishes, the meanest and vilest of the human race, so that he will be eternally happy, and can punish the best of the human race, so that he will be eternally miserable, is subversive of all morality.

No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me.

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing.