It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.
To hate man and love god seems to be the sum of all creeds.
atheismreligiontruth
As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.
atheism
There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.
booksreading
The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called faith.
absurdblisschristeternityfaithignoranceingersollinsanityreasonrobert
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
doubtfaithlibertyreligionskepticismslavery
Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith. Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
faithreligionskepticismsuperstition
Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.
freedomlibertypoliticsreligionskepticism
It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.
god
And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?
godnoahreligion
They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping or in the keeping of her God the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.
historypoliticsreligionseparation-of-church-and-state
Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.
hopeinspiration
Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
music
We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural.
commoningersollpoetrypresentreasonrobertsandseasense
In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.
politicsreligionskepticismworship