Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.
the inventor of the plow did more good than the maker of the first rosary - because, say what you will, plowing is better than praying.
I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony.
If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce.
Intellectual liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine of the mind, and without it, the world is a prison, the universe is a dungeon.
There is something tenderly appropriate in the serene death of the old. Nothing is more touching than the death of the young, the strong.
Whoever labors for the happiness of those he loves elevates himself, no matter whether he works in the dreary shop or the perfumed field.
Every religion in the world has denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that they all tell the truth - about others.
A good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it yourself. Keep your word with your child the same as you would with your banker.
If there is any God, there is only one way to please him, and that is by a conscientious discharge of your obligations to your fellow men.
Perish the infamous doctrine that man can have property in man. Let us resent with indignation every effort to put a chain upon our minds.
Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves.
A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.
If you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing.
George Eliot tenderly carried in her heart the burdens of our race. She looked through pity's tears upon the faults and frailties of mankind.
I want to tell you this: you cannot get the robe of hypocrisy on you so thick that the sharp eye of childhood will not see through every veil.
To destroy guide-boards that point in the wrong direction . . . to drive the fiend of fear from the mind . . . is the task of the Freethinker.
Intellectual liberty [is] the right to think right and the right to think wrong. Thought is the means by which we endeavor to arrive at truth.
Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called 'natural' man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation.
Voltaire lighted a torch and gave to others the sacred flame. The light still shines and will as long as man loves liberty and seeks for truth.
The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody.
Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song.
No system of religion should go in partnership with barbarism. Neither should any Christian feel it his duty to defend the savagery of the past.
Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?
If this religion is true, then there is only one Savior, only one narrow path to life. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other religion.
As long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power.
In the grave should be buried the prejudices and passions born of conflict. Charity should hold the scales in which are weighed the deeds of men.
In the search for truth - that everything in nature seems to hide - man needs the assistance of all his faculties. All the senses should be awake.
The savage prays to a stone that he calls a god, while the Christian prays to a god he calls a spirit, and the prayers of both are equally useful.
The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar - his life has been a success.
But honest men do not pretend to know; they are candid and sincere; they love the truth; they admit their ignorance, and they say, We do not know.
Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he should have used it.
If we are immortal it is a fact in nature, and we are not indebted to priests for it, nor to bibles for it, and it cannot be destroyed by unbelief.
I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber.
There are so many societies, so many churches, so many -isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career.
No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.
Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions for itself.
If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our fellow men. We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife and child and friend.
What is it that distinguishes you and me from the lower animals - from the beasts? More, I say, than anything else, human sympathy - human sympathy.
The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public.
This is my creed: Happiness is the only good; reason the only torch; justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.
Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his ideas upon all subjects at the expense of prince and king, was exiled to England.
The mind cannot be securely anchored. If we do not advance, we go backward. If we do not grow, we decay. If we do not develop, we shrink and shrivel.
The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue - or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes.
If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant.
One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.
In my judgment, the American people are too brave, too charitable, too generous, too magnanimous, to believe in the infamous dogma of an eternal hell.
Above all things, one should maintain his self-respect, and there is but one way to do that, and that is to live in accordance with your highest ideal.
For myself, I have but little confidence in any business, or enterprise, or investment, that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.
The ideas of right and wrong change with the experience of the race, and this change is wrought by the gradual ascertaining of consequences - of results.