There are few pages of history which do not demonstrate that public prayer and ritual never inoculated people against mass-madness and cruelty. What is needed is emphasis on morality and manners.

One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.

If the Old Testament were a reliable guide in the matter of capital punishment, half the people in the United States would have to be killed tomorrow.

If there is a God, the phrase that must disgust him is - holy war.

Laughter would appear to be a physical reflex, although even if it is, this still leaves unanswered the question of why the human response to humor is a convulsive spasm of the respiratory mechanism rather than a crossing of the eyes or a waving of the arms.

...we are entitled to make almost any reasonable assumption, but should resist making conclusions until evidence requires that we do so.

Civilization itself . . . can easily be swept aside when mob passions are aroused.