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

"It cannot be too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of miracle"

"Science built the Academy, superstition the inquisition"

"Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment"

"At present, a good many men engaged in scientific pursuits and those who have signally failed in gaining recognition among their fellows, are endeavoring to make reputations among the churches by delivering weak and vapid lectures upon the 'harmony o"

"There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women"

"The more liberty you give away the more you will have."

"A good deed is the best prayer"

"Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows."

"Those who have loved God most have loved men least"

"A crime against god is a demonstrated impossibility"

"To hate man and worship god seems to be the sum of all the creeds"

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

"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"

"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 a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets."

"If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith."

"Happiness is not a reward / it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment / it is a result."

"My creed is that; Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so."

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

"Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called 'natural' man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation."

"The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future"

"Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms."

"In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous"

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

"The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels"

"If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce"

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

"He (Thomas Paine) saw oppression on every hand; injustice everywhere; hypocrisy at the altar; venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne; and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong"

"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"

"I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations"

"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"

"An honest God is the noblest work of man."

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

"Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, everyone should be serene, slow-pulsed and calm."

"Anger blows out the lamp of the mind"

"Every man who expresses an honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty"

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

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

"It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead."

"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."

"The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart."

"I combat those only who, knowing nothing of the future, prophesy an eternity of pain- those who sow the seeds of fear in the hearts of men- those only who poison all the springs of life, and seat a skeleton at every feast"

"Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy a coffin"

"I found that the clergy did not understand their own book"

"It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense."

"Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense"

"Courage without conscience is a wild beast."

"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences."

"It is a blessed thing that in every age someone has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions"