Religion is one of the phases of thought through which the world is passing

{Letter from Fawcett to the great Robert Ingersoll, 1894}I do so wish, that, in all these big questions, literary men would take you more for a guide than they do, or seem to do. You...

According to this account the promise of the devil was fulfilled to the very letter, Adam and Eve did not die, and they did become as gods, knowing good and evil

Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them.

The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises...

The Bible was written by barbarians in a barbarous, coarse and vulgar age

Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.

These contradictions are gross and palpable and demonstrate that the New Testament is not inspired, and that many of its statements must be false

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 relieved...

A place where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.

The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.

I suppose it can be truthfully said that Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity

There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor

The great religious historian, Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully omitted whatever tended to discredit the church, and that he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory

The Old Testament describes the hell of the past, and the New the hell of the future

I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.

A good deed is the best prayer

You have no right to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought

To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead

If we should put god in the Constitution there would be no room left for man

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

Calvin was as near like the God of the Old Testament as his health permitted

This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves

The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

We must remember that we have to make judges out of men, and that by being made judges their prejudices are not diminished and their intelligence is not increased

Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne

The credulity of the church is decreasing, and the most marvelous miracles are not either ‘explained,’ or allowed to take refuge behind the mistakes of the translators, or hide in the drapery of allegory

We are not accountable for the sins of Adam

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death – that is heroism.

Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice.

It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those times (The Bible) is the result of accident or mistake

All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word,...

The closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat...

It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god

I found that the clergy did not understand their own book

The good part of Christmas is not always Christian — it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, natural.

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

That church teaches us that we can make God happy by being miserable ourselves;

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

You have no right to erect your tollgate upon the highways of thought. You have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have...

I would rather live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody but men

Those who have loved God most, have loved man least

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.

But if the witnesses are inspired of God then there is no reason for their disagreeing on anything, and if they do disagree it is a demonstration that they were not inspired