Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power.

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor

Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.

It is labor that has made the world a fit habitation for the human race.

No God can put a man in hell in another world, who has made a little heaven in this. God cannot make a man miserable if that man has made somebody else happy.

Man must learn to rely upon himself. Reading bibles will not protect him from the blasts of winter, but houses, fires. and clothing will. To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more diseases than all the prayers uttered since the beginning of the world.