Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.

The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread - a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal.

Either god should have written a book to fit my brain, or he should have made my brain to fit his book.

All religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. Shakespeare is my bible, Burns my hymn-book.

The real searcher after truth will not receive the old because it is old, or reject the new because it is new. He will not believe men because they are dead, or contradict them because they are alive. With him an utterance is worth the truth, the reason it contains, without the slightest regard to the author. He may have been a king or serf - a philosopher or servant, - but the utterance neither gains nor loses in truth or reason. Its value is absolutely independent of the fame or station of the man who gave it to the world.