My principal objections to orthodox religion are two: slavery here and hell hereafter.

It cannot be too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of miracle.

We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him.

All the professors in all the religious colleges in this country rolled into one, would not equal Charles Darwin.

[T]he blossom of benevolence, of charity, is the fairest flower, no matter whether it blooms by the side of a hovel, or bursts from a vine climbing the marble pillar of a palace. I respect no man because he is rich; I hold in contempt no man because he is poor.

Nothing is greater than to break the chains from the bodies of men, nothing nobler than to destroy the phantom of the soul.

By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think and the right to think wrong.