The best men are the least suspicious of fraudulent purposes.
There is no sphere in which a human being can be supposed to act where one mode of reasoning will not, in every given instance, be more reasonable than any other mode. That mode the being is bound by every principle of justice to pursue.
That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.
It is not the idea as such which the censor attacks, whether it be heresy or radicalism or obscenity. He attacks the circulation of the idea among the classes which in his judgment are not to be trusted with the idea.
Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.
The Truth never flaunted a sign.
If nature did not take delight in blood, She would have made more easy ways to good.
I have neither time nor disposition to enter into discussion with the Friend, and end this occasion by suggesting for her consideration the question whether, if it be true that the Lord has appointed me to do the work she has indicated, it is not probable that he would have communicated knowledge of the fact to me as well as to her.
Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty - necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.
Until the content of a belief is made clear, the appeal to accept the belief on faith is beside the point, for one would not know what one has accepted. The request for the meaning of a religious belief is logically prior to the question of accepting that belief on faith or to the question of whether that belief constitutes knowledge.
The time has come for honest men to denounce false teachers and attack false gods.
A theory is just a mathematical model to describe the observations.
[G]et two-thirds of the states to alter the Constitution; come out with their national religion, and then let the people get their throats ready.
Personal religious convictions have no place in political campaigns or in dictating public policy.
Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced.
Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, 'Will it bring you nearer to God?'
Certain things are complete superstition and have no validity at all in the Bible. Yeah. They're just the antithesis of everything that is correct intellectually.
I die, as I have lived, a free spirit, an Anarchist, owing no allegiance to rulers, heavenly or earthly.
One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.