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.

Logic is not satisfied with assertion. It cares nothing for the opinions of the great; nothing for the prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of the dead.

There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.

Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in god. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed.

An infinite personality is an infinite impossibility.

The God of Hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A God who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved - cursed, not worshiped. A heaven presided over by such a God must be below the lowest hell.

The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts.