Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? Yes, we all know it. That is the time all religions tell the truth - each of the other.

By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think and the right to think wrong.

It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.

All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention - of barbarian invention - is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition - then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity.

If we are immortal, it is a fact of nature, and that fact does not depend on bibles, on Christs, priest, or creeds.

When passions and appetites are stronger than the intellect, men are savages; when the intellect governs the passions, when the passions are servants, men are civilized. The people need education - facts - philosophy.

It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.