Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves.

As long as every question is answered by the word "God," scientific inquiry is simply impossible.

Intellectual liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine of the mind, and without it, the world is a prison, the universe is a dungeon.

All religion is slavery.

I thank thee, Mother Nature, that thou hast put ingenuity enough in the brain of a child, when attacked by a brutal parent, to throw up a little breastwork in the shape of a lie.

We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural.

Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.