Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.

Not one of the orthodox ministers dare preach what he thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation think otherwise. He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is not expected to search after the truth, but that he is employed to defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.

At thirty most men have prejudices rather than opinions-that is to say, rather than judgments-and few men have lived to be sixty without materially modifying the opinions they held at thirty.

Upon the great questions of origin, of destiny, of immortality, of . . . other worlds, every honest man must say, 'I do not know.' Upon these questions, this is the creed of intelligence.

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, east a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.

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