All religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. Shakespeare is my bible, Burns my hymn-book.

For myself, I have but little confidence in any business, or enterprise, or investment, that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.

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.

In a world of cruelty, sympathy is a crime, and in a world of lies, truth is blasphemy.

To avoid pain we must know the conditions of health. For the accomplishment of this end we must rely upon investigation instead of faith, upon labor in place of prayer. Most misery is produced by ignorance. Passions sow the seeds of pain.

Burns had his faults, his frailties. He was intensely human. Still, I would rather appear at the "Judgment Seat" drunk, and be able to say that I was the author of "A man's a man for 'a that," than to be perfectly sober and admit that I had lived and died a Scotch Presbyterian.

Death is only perfect rest.