It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.

A few years ago the Deists denied the inspiration of the Bible on account of its cruelty. At the same time they worshiped what they were pleased to call the God of Nature. Now we are convinced that Nature is as cruel as the Bible; so that, if the God of Nature did not write the Bible, this God at least has caused earthquakes and pestilence and famine, and this God has allowed millions of his children to destroy one another. So that now we have arrived at the question - not as to whether the Bible is inspired and not as to whether Jehovah is the real God, but whether there is a God or not.

Reason is the light, the sun of the brain. It is the compass of the mind, the ever-constant Northern Star, the mountain peak that lifts itself above all clouds.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

And what is the great thing that the stage does? It cultivates the imagination. And . . . the imagination constitutes the great difference between human beings. . . . The imagination is the mother of pity, the mother of generosity, the mother of every possible virtue. It is by the imagination that you are enabled to put yourself in the place of another.

To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.