We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him.

The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called faith.

The first duty of man is to support himself - to see to it that he does not become a burden. His next duty is to help others if he has a surplus, and if he really believes they deserve to be helped.

I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.

Is not the history of real civilization the slow and gradual emancipation of the intellect, of the judgment, from the mastery of passion? Is not that man civilized whose reason sits the crowned monarch of his brain - whose passions are his servants?

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

Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter.