All should be taught that the highest ambition is to be happy, and to add to the well-being of others; that place and power are not necessary to success; that the desire to acquire great wealth is a kind of insanity. They should be taught that it is a waste of energy, a waste of thought, a waste of life, to acquire what you do not need and what you do not really use for the benefit of yourself or others.

Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.

I hate above all things a cross man. What right has he to murder the sunshine of a day? What right has he to assassinate the Joy of life? When you go home, you ought to go like a ray of light-so that it will, even in the night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness.

Commerce is the great civilizer.

Grant others the same rights as you claim for yourself.

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

To know that the Bible is the literature of a barbarous people, to know that it is uninspired, to be certain that the supernatural does not and cannot exist - all this is but the beginning of wisdom.