Now, your Honor, I have spoken about the [Civil] war. I believed in it. I don’t know whether I was crazy or not. Sometimes I think perhaps I was. I approved of it; I joined...

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.

We are born and we die; and between these two most important events in our lives more or less time elapses which we have to waste somehow or other. In the end it does not...

I don’t like spinach, and I’m glad I don’t, because if I liked it I’d eat it, and I just hate it.

The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries.

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one...

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.

Sympathy is the child of imagination

To think is to differ.

Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; Justice is what comes out of a courtroom.

If a man is happy in America, it is considered he is doing something wrong.

Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools,...

I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother Goose.

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.

I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure – that is all that agnosticism means.

I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.

Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

Some false representations contravene the law; some do not. … The sensibilities of no two men are the same. Some would refuse to sell property without carefully explaining all about its merits and defects, and...

The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to...

The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business.

Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.

The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.

No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed.

Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more.

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?

The pursuit of truth will set you free; even if you never catch up with it.

This play is dedicated to the memory of Clarence Darrow, The Great Defender, whose mental frontiers were the four corners of the sky.

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.

Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.

There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men...

Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they serve.

Working people have alot of bad habits, but the worst of these is work.

Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been...

The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.

To be an effective criminal defense counsel, an attorney must be prepared to be demanding, outrageous, irreverent, blasphemous, a rogue, a renegade, and a hated, isolated, and lonely person – few love a spokesman for...

Depressions may bring people closer to the church but so do funerals.

Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas.

I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there...

The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.

[George Everett Macdonald was] a valiant soldier for human liberty.

Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom.

You can only be free if I am free.

The world is made up for the most part of morons and natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions, never doubting anything.

History repeats itself, and that’s one of the things that’s wrong with history.

In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality.

Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire...