In a world of cruelty, sympathy is a crime, and in a world of lies, truth is blasphemy.

Intelligence is the only moral guide.

Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.

One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests.

Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.

To me, the most obscene word in our language is celibacy.

My heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain... to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men. And then I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still.