Years should not be devoted to the acquisition of dead languages or to the study of history which, for the most part, is a detailed account of things that never occurred. It is useless to fill the individual with dates of great battles, with the births and deaths of kings. They should be taught the philosophy of history, the growth of nations, of philosophies, theories, and, above all, of the sciences.

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.

Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of progress, the enemy of education and the assassin of freedom.

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

I would rather smoke one cigar than hear two sermons.

Had he been willing to live a hypocrite, he would have been respectable, he at least could have died surrounded by other hypocrites, and at his death there would have been an imposing funeral, with miles of carriages, filled with hypocrites, and above his hypocritical dust there would have been a hypocritical monument covered with lies.