I want it so that every minister will be not a parrot, not an owl sitting upon a dead limb of the tree of knowledge and hooting the hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. But I want it so that each one can be an investigator, a thinker; and I want to make his congregation grand enough so that they will not only allow him to think, but will demand that he shall think, and give to them the honest truth of his thought.

Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud

Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.

Creationists use facts the same way a drunk uses a lightpost: for support instead of illumination

He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He is the gentlest memory of our world.

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

If a man wishes to have God recognized in the constitution of our country, let him read the history of the Inquisition, and let him remember that hundreds of millions of men, women, and children have been sacrificed to placate the wrath, or win the approbation of this god.