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In His Own Words

Quotes

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The selection

20 lines, chosen by hand. These are what the showcase and the home page draw on.

  1. “An honest God is the noblest work of man.”

  2. “Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith.”

  3. “The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.”

  4. “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences.”

  5. “The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.”

  6. “Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.”
    Robert G. IngersollThe Creed 1882 Permalink & share Often called Ingersoll's creed; he repeated it in many lectures.

  7. “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.”

  8. “Reason, observation, and experience, the holy trinity of science.”

  9. “Few rich men own their property; the property owns them.”

  10. “Heretics are the savers of liberty.”

  11. “Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.”

  12. “If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would strictly follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane.”

  13. “Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and all depths.”

  14. “It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.”

  15. “Every creed is a rock in running water; humanity sweeps by it.”

  16. “Love is the only bow on life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher.”

  17. “Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason, that if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you.”

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

  19. “Justice is the only worship. Love is the only priest. Ignorance is the only slavery. Happiness is the only good.”

  20. “Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud — and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry.”

From A Year of Ingersoll

All 365, in calendar order — each on its own page, linked to the paragraph it came from. Read them in full by date, or subscribe in a calendar app.

  1. Jan 1 A man who slanders a pure woman or an honest man is a blasphemer. So, too, a man who does not give the honest…
  2. Jan 2 Great wealth is a great burden, and to have more than you can use, is to care for more than you want.
  3. Jan 3 Liberty is the blossom and fruit of justice—the perfume of mercy. Liberty is the seed and soil, the air and…
  4. Jan 4 For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
  5. Jan 5 Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best…
  6. Jan 6 I insist that happiness is the end—virtue the means—and anything that wipes a tear from the face of man is…
  7. Jan 7 Freedom is progress—slavery is desolation, cruelty and want.
  8. Jan 8 The prudent is not the poetic; it is the mathematical. Genius is the spirit of abandon; it is joyous…
  9. Jan 9 We cannot tell, we do not know, which is the greater blessing—life or death. We cannot say that death is not…
  10. Jan 10 The religion that has to be supported by law is without value, not only, but a fraud and curse.
  11. Jan 11 The lash will neither develop the brain nor cultivate the heart.
  12. Jan 12 Every creed in which is the dogma of eternal pain is doomed.
  13. Jan 13 Nothing is more touching than the death of the young, the strong.
  14. Jan 14 The flag for which the heroes fought, for which they died, is the symbol of all we are, of all we hope to be.
  15. Jan 15 The working people are reasoners—their hands and heads are in partnership. They know a great deal more than…
  16. Jan 16 If the very fountain of power is poisoned by fraud, then the whole Government is impure.
  17. Jan 17 The coffin is good enough in its way, but the cradle is far better. With the bones of the fathers they beat…
  18. Jan 18 Fear is barbarism—courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is…
  19. Jan 19 There have been, and still are, too many men who own themselves—too much thought, too much knowledge for the…
  20. Jan 20 Liberty is the breath of progress; it is the seed and soil, the heat and rain of love and joy.
  21. Jan 21 Abject faith is barbarism; reason is civilization. To obey is slavish; to act from a sense of obligation…
  22. Jan 22 No matter how small the taper is, how feeble the ray of light it casts, it is better than darkness, and no…
  23. Jan 23 The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men.
  24. Jan 24 The more a man has thought, the more he has studied, the more he has traveled intellectually, the less…
  25. Jan 25 Surely investigation is better than unthinking faith. Surely reason is a better guide than fear.
  26. Jan 26 Death gets all its terror from Love, and Love gets its intensity, its radiance, its glory and its rapture…
  27. Jan 27 Life is not all sunshine, neither is it all storm, but man should be enabled to enjoy the one and to…
  28. Jan 28 In nearly every department of science man is allowed to investigate, and the discovery of a new fact is…
  29. Jan 29 Science insists that the present is the child of all the past,—that no power can change the past, and that…
  30. Jan 30 Every fact is an enemy of the church. Every fact is a heretic. Every demonstration is an infidel.
  31. Jan 31 The intelligent prefer death to slavery. Education is the most radical abolitionist in the world. To teach…
  32. Feb 1 In a moment the seed is a plant, and the plant is in blossom, and the fruit is given to the world.
  33. Feb 2 Men when they commit crimes endeavor to get away from the public eye. They are in love with darkness. They do…
  34. Feb 3 As a rule, the attention of man is drawn first, not to his own mistakes, not to his own faults, but to the…
  35. Feb 4 Love is the many-colored flame that makes the fireside of the heart. It is the mingled spring and autumn—the…
  36. Feb 5 The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership…
  37. Feb 6 The spiritually-minded man is a poet. If he does not write poetry, he lives it. He is an artist.
  38. Feb 7 The foundation of superstition is ignorance, the superstructure is faith and the dome is a vain hope.
  39. Feb 8 Better to be stolen from than to be a thief, and in the last analysis the oppressed, the slave, is less…
  40. Feb 9 If the angels of the Bible are real angels, the devils are real devils.
  41. Feb 10 Truth is more important than belief—far better than creeds, vastly more useful than superstitions.
  42. Feb 11 If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are…
  43. Feb 12 Theology is not intended to be understood,—it is only to be believed. It is an act, not of reason, but of…
  44. Feb 13 The world must learn that credulity is not a virtue and that no question is settled until reason is fully…
  45. Feb 14 The mendacity of superstition is almost enough to make a man believe in the supernatural.
  46. Feb 15 Superstition is a terrible serpent, reaching in frightful coils from heaven to earth and thrusting its…
  47. Feb 16 What light is to the eyes, what love is to the heart, Liberty is to the soul of man.
  48. Feb 17 If there be another world in which sincerity is a virtue, in which fidelity is loved and courage honored…
  49. Feb 18 Immortality is a word that Hope through all the ages has been whispering to Love.
  50. Feb 19 Nothing is more despicable than to reach fame by crawling,—position by cringing.
  51. Feb 20 The mind of man is many-sided. Truth must be and is willing to be tested in every way, tested by all the…
  52. Feb 21 To be vanquished by the truth is to be a victor. The man who follows is a slave. The man who thinks is free.
  53. Feb 22 The civilized man loves a woman not only for his own sake, but for her sake. He longs to make her happy—to…
  54. Feb 23 There is only one good, and that is human happiness; and he only is a wise man who makes himself and others…
  55. Feb 24 No Devil, no fall of man. No Devil, no atonement. No Devil, no hell.
  56. Feb 25 I thank the poets of the dawn—the tellers of legends—the makers of myths—the singers of joy and grief, of…
  57. Feb 26 The world advances by the assistance of all laborers; and all labor is under obligations to the inventions of…
  58. Feb 27 No man is more certain than the man who knows nothing. The savage knows everything.
  59. Feb 28 The free man, into whose brain the serpent of superstition has not crept, knows that the dogma of eternal…
  60. Mar 1 The honest man pays at the command of his honor and not at the demand of the creditor.
  61. Mar 2 The whipping-post pollutes, not only the whipped, but the whipper, and not only the whipper, but the…
  62. Mar 3 A fool friend is always full of a kind of stupid candor.
  63. Mar 4 No human being has brain enough, or knowledge enough, or experience enough, to say whether there is, or is…
  64. Mar 5 In discussion there is no place for hatred, no opportunity for slander. A personality is always out of place.
  65. Mar 6 The brain is natural. Its food is natural. The result—thought—must be natural.
  66. Mar 7 There should be no delay except that which is caused by taking the time to find the truth.
  67. Mar 8 There is only one way, in my judgment, to bring that about; and that is, first, not simply by the education…
  68. Mar 9 I believe that the common school is the bread of life, and all should be commanded to eat of the fruit of the…
  69. Mar 10 The cruelty of the flood is exceeded only by its stupidity.
  70. Mar 11 In the orthodox heaven there is no mercy, no pity. In the orthodox hell there is no hope, no reform. God is…
  71. Mar 12 Guilt is always conscious that it is guilty. Guilt is always suspecting detection. Guilt is infinitely…
  72. Mar 13 The useful man is the good man, the useful man is the real saint.
  73. Mar 14 The time is coming when no man will be called an honest man who is not willing to give to every other man, be…
  74. Mar 15 All the meanness of which the heart of man is capable is in that one word—Hell.
  75. Mar 16 There are good people and bad people in all races, and the individual is not responsible for the crimes of…
  76. Mar 17 In every direction the thinker and the investigator have ventured and explored, and even the pews have begun…
  77. Mar 18 The world is better for your life—The world is braver for your death.
  78. Mar 19 The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead, and every sweet, unselfish act…
  79. Mar 20 Sincerity is the true and perfect mirror of the mind. It reflects the honest thought. It is the foundation of…
  80. Mar 21 The babes that are then born will be welcome. They will be clasped with glad hands to happy breasts. They…
  81. Mar 22 Fear is the dungeon of the mind, and superstition is a dagger with which hypocrisy assassinates the soul…
  82. Mar 23 The light still shines and will as long as man loves liberty and seeks for truth.
  83. Mar 24 Nothing is more needed at the present time than an inspired translator.
  84. Mar 25 The individual is counting for less and less; the corporation, the trust, for more and more.
  85. Mar 26 I am a believer in intellectual liberty, and wherever the torch of knowledge burns the whole horizon is…
  86. Mar 27 A rich spendthrift is a blessing. A rich miser is a curse. Extravagance is a splendid form of charity.
  87. Mar 28 Leave religion with the church, with the family, and more than all, leave religion with each individual heart…
  88. Mar 29 There is something magnificent after all about the extravagance of youth, and there is something pitiful…
  89. Mar 30 Liberty is the condition of real progress. The free man works for wife and child—the slave toils from fear.
  90. Mar 31 At last, nations are becoming acquainted with each other, and they now know that people everywhere are…
  91. Apr 1 The love of the beautiful is shared with man by most animals. The wings of the moth are painted by love, by…
  92. Apr 2 The great picture should have, not only the technical part of art, which is neither moral nor immoral, but in…
  93. Apr 3 There is something wrong when men are obliged to beg for leave to toil.
  94. Apr 4 Everything that is possible happens. That may not suit all the creeds, but it is true. And everything that is…
  95. Apr 5 I tell you there is no more sacred, no more holy, and no purer thing than what you and I call sympathy; and…
  96. Apr 6 The Press presents the daily thoughts of men. It marks the progress of each hour, and renders a relapse into…
  97. Apr 7 I want to keep the roof over the heads of children when the man himself is gone. I want that homestead to…
  98. Apr 8 If there is anything of value, it is liberty—liberty of body, liberty of mind. The liberty of body is the…
  99. Apr 9 The gloomy caverns of superstition have been transformed into temples of thought, and the demons of the past…
  100. Apr 10 Loving words sow seeds of love in every gentle heart. Appreciation is the soil and climate of good and…
  101. Apr 11 When the angel of pity is driven from the heart; when the fountain of tears is dry,—the soul becomes a…
  102. Apr 12 Nothing ennobles a man so much as fighting for the right.
  103. Apr 13 I would like to see the whole world free—free from injustice—free from superstition.
  104. Apr 14 Infidelity stands by facts; it demonstrates by the conclusions of the reason. Infidelity does all it can to…
  105. Apr 15 The English battered down the door in the names of opium and Christ.
  106. Apr 16 Peace without liberty could have been only a bloody delusion and a snare. Freedom is peace; Slavery is war.
  107. Apr 17 We know that no man is thoroughly honest who does not tell his honest thought.
  108. Apr 18 All greatness is merciful. All greatness longs to forgive. All true grandeur and nobility is capable of…
  109. Apr 19 The man who thought, and expressed his thoughts, died in a dungeon—on the scaffold or in flames.
  110. Apr 20 By spiritual I mean a man that has an ideal, a great ideal, and who is splendid enough to live to that ideal…
  111. Apr 21 Ignorance is a poor doctor, even for the poor, and if we pretend to be charitable we ought to carry it out.
  112. Apr 22 If a man simply shouts for his side, or gets mad, he is a long way from any intellectual improvement.
  113. Apr 23 Every man who has caused real, true, honest mirth, has been a benefactor of the human race.
  114. Apr 24 The young, the growing, the enthusiastic, are on my side.
  115. Apr 25 The Improved Man will not give his life to the accumulation of wealth. He will find no happiness in exciting…
  116. Apr 26 In the presence of the Great Mystery, the great mystery that waits to enshroud us all, we feel the…
  117. Apr 27 A noble life is never lost. A virtuous action does not die.
  118. Apr 28 To the average man the Christian hell and heaven are only words.
  119. Apr 29 A braver, a more serene, a more chivalric spirit—clasping the loved and by them clasped—never passed from…
  120. Apr 30 In the drama of human life, all are actors, and no one knows his part.
  121. May 1 No one could fall below her pity, no one could wander beyond the circumference of her sympathy.
  122. May 2 New friends can never fill the places of the old.
  123. May 3 The imagination of man has the horizon of experience; and beyond experience or nature man cannot go, even in…
  124. May 4 A black man in favor of liberty is better than a white man in favor of slavery.
  125. May 5 Men are beginning to express their honest thoughts. In the arena where speech is free, superstition is driven…
  126. May 6 The man who is fitted to take care of himself, in the conditions he may be placed, is, in a very important…
  127. May 7 There are verses that elevate, verses that degrade. There are prayers for forgiveness and revenge.
  128. May 8 The present moment is the child, and the necessary child, of all the past.
  129. May 9 Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty. The superior…
  130. May 10 The imagination is the mother of pity, the mother of generosity, the mother of every possible virtue.
  131. May 11 The grand people are marching forward, and they will not pause until the earth is without a chain, and…
  132. May 12 Every brain is a gallery of art, and every soul is, to a greater or less degree, an artist.
  133. May 13 We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all.
  134. May 14 The history of civilization is the history of the slow and painful enfranchisement of the human race.
  135. May 15 Let us develop the brain by education, the heart by kindness.
  136. May 16 The doctrine of hell is now only for the poor, the ragged, the ignorant.
  137. May 17 The flare and flicker of youth are gone, and the soul is like the flame of a lamp where the air is at rest.
  138. May 18 There is no language to express the debt we owe, the love we bear, to all the dead who died for us. Words are…
  139. May 19 For a man to get up before daylight and work till after dark, life is of no particular importance.
  140. May 20 The flag that will not protect its protectors and defend its defenders is a rag that is not worth the air in…
  141. May 21 In language, words of joy are born of light—that which shines—words of grief of darkness and gloom.
  142. May 22 The affections of the human heart are worth more than all the myths of all the religions.
  143. May 23 Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best…
  144. May 24 All there is of value in the world is the product of labor. The laboring man pays all the expenses.
  145. May 25 The world is beginning to change because the people are beginning to think. To think is to advance.
  146. May 26 Certainly the religion of humanity is better than the religion of the inhuman.
  147. May 27 There can be nothing more utterly subversive of all that is really valuable than the suppression of honest…
  148. May 28 Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand…
  149. May 29 The truth is, we are both good and bad. The worst are capable of some good deeds, and the best are capable of…
  150. May 30 The night, in the purple hum of the bass, wanders away like some enormous bee across wide fields of dead…
  151. May 31 We need the open air—we need the experience of heat and cold. We need not only the rewards and caresses, but…
  152. Jun 1 If we are responsible for our thoughts, we ought not only to know how they are formed, but we ought to form…
  153. Jun 2 There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood—between…
  154. Jun 3 The brain of the world is not yet developed. There are intellectual diseases as well as physical—there are…
  155. Jun 4 Every library is an arsenal, and every truth is a monitor, iron-clad and steel-plated.
  156. Jun 5 The pioneers—the home builders, the heroes of toil, are all poets, and their deeds are filled with the pathos…
  157. Jun 6 The worst lie in the world is a lie which is partly true.
  158. Jun 7 There is in the life of the individual, as in the life of the race, a period of credulity, when not only…
  159. Jun 8 Wit is a crystallization, humor an efflorescence. Wit comes from the brain, humor from the heart. Wit is the…
  160. Jun 9 Love and Virtue are the same the whole world round, and Justice is the same in every star.
  161. Jun 10 Spirituality is the perfect health of the soul. It is noble, manly, generous, brave, free-spoken, natural…
  162. Jun 11 We know that good is not evil, and that evil is not good. We know that light is not darkness, and that…
  163. Jun 12 The citizens of the real world gain joy and comfort from the stage.
  164. Jun 13 If devils do not exist the fall of man is a mistake and the atonement an absurdity. If devils do not exist…
  165. Jun 14 In all the sacred books there are some truths, some rays of light, some words of love and hope.
  166. Jun 15 The real priest will then be, not the mouth-piece of some pretended deity, but the interpreter of nature.
  167. Jun 16 The great effort of the human mind is to ascertain the order of facts by which we are surrounded—the history…
  168. Jun 17 A fact, inconsistent with the creed, is denounced as a lie, and the man who declares or announces the fact is…
  169. Jun 18 Truth is a cripple; lies have wings. It is almost impossible to overtake and kill and bury a lie.
  170. Jun 19 A public man, to be successful, must not assert anything unless it is exceedingly popular.
  171. Jun 20 No man can think as he desires. No man controls the action of his brain, any more than he controls the action…
  172. Jun 21 There is no dread of loss when all is growth and gain. With reckless hands we spend and waste and chide the…
  173. Jun 22 The miracle of thought we cannot understand. The mystery of life and death we cannot comprehend.
  174. Jun 23 In the grave should be buried the prejudices and passions born of conflict. Charity should hold the scales in…
  175. Jun 24 The philosopher does not hide. Secrecy is not the friend of truth. No man should be reverent at the expense…
  176. Jun 25 God is a king whose will is law, and men are serfs and slaves.
  177. Jun 26 The civilized husband places the happiness of his wife above his own. Her love is the wealth of his heart…
  178. Jun 27 Most people imagine that the rich are in heaven, but, as a rule, it is only a gilded hell.
  179. Jun 28 We have lived to see the Bible tested by Science, and, what is more, we have lived to see reason the standard…
  180. Jun 29 I thank all who have adorned, enriched and ennobled life—all who have created the great, the noble, the…
  181. Jun 30 There is nothing in plowing the fields to make men cross, cruel and crabbed.
  182. Jul 1 The moment man begins to be civilized he begins to appreciate how little he knows, how very circumscribed in…
  183. Jul 2 The Freethinker knows that the universe is natural—that there is no room, even in infinite space, for the…
  184. Jul 3 The superior man is the man who loves his fellow-man.
  185. Jul 4 Our Government is founded on the equality of human rights—on the idea, the sacred truth, that all are…
  186. Jul 5 The fear of punishment may deter some, the fear of exposure others; but there is no real reforming power in…
  187. Jul 6 A fool friend is the sewer of bad news, of slander and all base and unpleasant things.
  188. Jul 7 The church in all ages and among all peoples has been the consistent enemy of the human race.
  189. Jul 8 An angry man can neither reason himself, nor perceive the reason of what another says.
  190. Jul 9 A man looks at the sea, and the sea says something to him.
  191. Jul 10 The State in which a criminal cannot have an impartial trial is not civilized.
  192. Jul 11 I do not want the church or the state to come between the man and wife.
  193. Jul 12 If we wish to make the future of the Republic glorious we must educate the children of the present.
  194. Jul 13 If a man should be honest with himself he should be honest with others.
  195. Jul 14 The more we know, the more beauty, the more poetry we find. Ignorance is not the mother of the poetic or…
  196. Jul 15 Nothing is so profoundly mournful as a home that has been covered with shame—a wife that is worse than…
  197. Jul 16 The great principle underlying our system of government is that the people have the virtue and the patriotism…
  198. Jul 17 The wanderers hope for home.—Hope builds the house and plants the flowers and fills the air with song.
  199. Jul 18 There is no propriety in swapping superstitions—neither party can afford to give any boot.
  200. Jul 19 A church founded on slavery—that is to say, on blind obedience, worshiping irresponsible and arbitrary power…
  201. Jul 20 A heart breaks, a man dies, a leaf falls in the far forest, a babe is born, and the great world sweeps on.
  202. Jul 21 From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a…
  203. Jul 22 We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing…
  204. Jul 23 Over all wealth, above all station, above the noble, the robed and crowned, rises the sincere man.
  205. Jul 24 The hand is burned, and after that the child keeps its hand out of the fire.
  206. Jul 25 Let me tell you to-day it is far more important to build a home than to erect a church.
  207. Jul 26 In every way the clergy sought to evade the facts, to dodge the truth, to preserve the creed.
  208. Jul 27 The Christians are not agreed among themselves as to what books are inspired.
  209. Jul 28 An orator must be a poet, a metaphysician, a logician—and above all, must have sympathy with all.
  210. Jul 29 The gem of the brain is the innocence of the soul.
  211. Jul 30 Labor is the great oak, labor is the great column, and labor, with its deft and cunning hands, has created…
  212. Jul 31 Let every man be his own bishop, let every man be his own pope, let every man do his own thinking, let every…
  213. Aug 1 No man should wish or endeavor to win a case that he knows is wrong.
  214. Aug 2 If the foundation is not justice, the dome cannot be high enough, or splendid enough, to save the temple.
  215. Aug 3 Nothing else is so well calculated to make friends of all nations as really to become acquainted with the…
  216. Aug 4 The institution of marriage is a failure to the extent, and only to the extent, that the human race is a…
  217. Aug 5 All beauty is relative. Probably the most beautiful thing to a frog is the speckled belly of another frog, or…
  218. Aug 6 To help others help themselves is the only real charity. There is no use in boosting a man who is not…
  219. Aug 7 Nothing ever happened beneath the dome of heaven that could have been avoided.
  220. Aug 8 A lie is unnatural. A lie, in the nature of things, is a monstrosity.
  221. Aug 9 No catastrophe can be great enough, no ruin wide-spread enough, to engulf or blot out the wisdom of the world.
  222. Aug 10 Every schoolhouse is an arsenal, filled with weapons and ammunition to destroy the monsters of ignorance and…
  223. Aug 11 The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.
  224. Aug 12 Surely we do not need an inspired book to teach us that slavery is right, that polygamy is virtue, and that…
  225. Aug 13 A great nation should be bound by the highest conception of justice and honor.
  226. Aug 14 The men of science have explored heaven and earth, and with infinite patience have furnished the facts. The…
  227. Aug 15 Praise for the noble dead is an inspiration for the noble living.
  228. Aug 16 Brain without heart is far more dangerous than heart without brain.
  229. Aug 17 A country that guarantees liberty to all cannot be too large.
  230. Aug 18 I would like to see corporal punishment done away with in every home, in every school, in every asylum…
  231. Aug 19 I stand by the religion of reason. I stand by the dogmas of demonstration.
  232. Aug 20 A man who deserts the truth because it is unpopular is a blasphemer.
  233. Aug 21 The savage who understands the habits of animals, who is a good hunter and fisher, is a man of education…
  234. Aug 22 Liberty is my religion. Liberty of hand and brain—of thought and labor.
  235. Aug 23 Solemnity is a mask worn by ignorance and hypocrisy—it is the preface, prologue, and index to the cunning or…
  236. Aug 24 The man who hates the black man because he is black, has the same spirit as he who hates the poor man because…
  237. Aug 25 The drama is a crystallization of history, an epitome of the human heart.
  238. Aug 26 Freedom believes in education—the salvation of slavery is ignorance.
  239. Aug 27 A great picture is the melody of form and color. A great statue does not suggest labor; it seems to have been…
  240. Aug 28 The future has been filled with fear, stained and polluted by the heartless past.
  241. Aug 29 The great body of the people make all the money; do all the work. They plow the land, cut down the forests…
  242. Aug 30 A civilized man does not believe in the methods of savagery.
  243. Aug 31 The great reason why the orthodox creeds have become unpopular is, that all teach the dogma of eternal pain.
  244. Sep 1 Every good man hates and despises the wretch who abuses wife and child—who rules by curses and blows and…
  245. Sep 2 Courage without conscience is a wild beast. Patriotism without principle is the prejudice of birth, the…
  246. Sep 3 Any man who wishes to force his brother to work—to toil—more than eight hours a day is not a civilized man.
  247. Sep 4 A Government that will not protect its citizens is a disgrace to humanity.
  248. Sep 5 The only way to make men temperate is to develop the brain.
  249. Sep 6 The rights of man are more sacred than the dictates of any creed.
  250. Sep 7 The heretics have not thought and suffered and died in vain. Every heretic has been, and is, a ray of light.
  251. Sep 8 Every child should be taught that useful work is worship and that intelligent labor is the highest form of…
  252. Sep 9 The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul—breaking the mental manacles—getting the brain out of…
  253. Sep 10 We are satisfied that nothing more wonderful has happened than is now happening.
  254. Sep 11 The church has been the enemy of progress, for the reason that it has endeavored to prevent man thinking for…
  255. Sep 12 The poets have always lived in an ideal world, and that ideal world has always been far better than the real…
  256. Sep 13 The grave is not a throne, and a corpse is not a king. Man should not try to live on ashes.
  257. Sep 14 Love is a flower that grows on the edge of the grave.
  258. Sep 15 The nations in love with life, have games. To them existence is exultation. They are fond of nature.
  259. Sep 16 Woman is not the intellectual inferior of man. She has lacked, not mind, but opportunity.
  260. Sep 17 The individual lives the life of the race, and the child is charmed with what the race in its infancy…
  261. Sep 18 The star that shines above that dawn, the herald of that day, is Science, not superstition,—Reason, not…
  262. Sep 19 When people read, they reason, when they reason they progress.
  263. Sep 20 The great poet seems as unconscious as Nature, and the product of the highest art seems to have been felt…
  264. Sep 21 Suspicion is the soil in which prejudice grows, and prejudice is the upas tree in whose shade reason fails…
  265. Sep 22 As the child grows, facts take the place of the old beliefs, and the same is true of the race.
  266. Sep 23 When men are prosperous, they are in love with life.
  267. Sep 24 After all, the real question is not whether the Bible is inspired, but whether it is true.
  268. Sep 25 There is no possible connection between superstition and the spiritual, or between theology and the spiritual.
  269. Sep 26 Superstition is the child of ignorance and the mother of misery.
  270. Sep 27 The stage has ever been the altar, the pulpit, the cathedral of the heart.
  271. Sep 28 Every little brain becomes a menagerie, filled with wild beasts from hell. The imagination is polluted with…
  272. Sep 29 If the Bible is true, the science known as geology is false and every fossil is a petrified perjurer.
  273. Sep 30 A poem is produced by the forces of nature, and is as necessarily and naturally produced as mountains and…
  274. Oct 1 There is in the intellectual world, as in the material, decay and growth, and ever by the grave of buried age…
  275. Oct 2 Ignorance is the mother of mystery and misery, of superstition and sorrow, of waste and want.
  276. Oct 3 Nothing is so prolific, nothing can so multiply itself, nothing can lay and hatch as many eggs, as a good…
  277. Oct 4 To-day the need of our civilization is public men who have the courage to speak as they think.
  278. Oct 5 Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there…
  279. Oct 6 In youth we front the sun; we live in light without a fear, without a thought of dusk or night.
  280. Oct 7 All paths, whether filled with thorns or flowers, end here. Here success and failure are the same.
  281. Oct 8 Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State.
  282. Oct 9 If God be the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, he should not imprison there the men who broke the chains of…
  283. Oct 10 Let us develop the brain and civilize the heart. Let us ascertain the conditions of happiness and live in…
  284. Oct 11 Man should think; he should use all his senses; he should examine; he should reason.
  285. Oct 12 The press is untrammeled. And that is all that the right should ever ask—a free press, free speech, and the…
  286. Oct 13 Every religion is a natural product—the result of conditions.
  287. Oct 14 The scientists never persecuted, never imprisoned their fellow-men.
  288. Oct 15 Happiness is wealth. We can be happy without being rich—without holding office—without being famous.
  289. Oct 16 I hate to see brain the slave of the material god. I hate to see money own genius.
  290. Oct 17 As long as men believe in tyranny in heaven they will practice tyranny on earth.
  291. Oct 18 Every convenience, everything of use, everything of beauty in the world, we owe to free labor and to free…
  292. Oct 19 How perilous, after all, is the state of man. It is the work of a life to build a great and splendid…
  293. Oct 20 The fool friend regards your reputation as common prey for all the vultures, hyenas and jackals.
  294. Oct 21 When man is unprejudiced, and his passions subject to reason, it is well he should define the limits of…
  295. Oct 22 No science should be neglected; no fact should be overlooked. Inventions should be described and understood.
  296. Oct 23 The supernatural can be constructed with no material except the natural.
  297. Oct 24 We must remember that revenge is always in haste, and that justice can always afford to wait until the…
  298. Oct 25 The time will come when it will be utterly impossible for a man to go down to death, grasping millions in the…
  299. Oct 26 I believe in the schools for manual training, and that every child should be taught not only to think, but to…
  300. Oct 27 A God cannot annihilate or create matter. Annihilation and creation are both impossible—unthinkable.
  301. Oct 28 In the orthodox Sunday schools, children are taught that it is a duty to believe—that evidence is not…
  302. Oct 29 There is no logic in abuse. There is no argument in epithet.
  303. Oct 30 I do believe that usefulness is the highest possible form of worship.
  304. Oct 31 The man who doubts the right of the people to govern themselves casts a little doubt upon the question…
  305. Nov 1 Let us hope, if there be a God that he is wise and good.
  306. Nov 2 For the followers of one god to treat the followers of another god decently is a kind of treason.
  307. Nov 3 No church asserting that belief is necessary to salvation ever was, or ever will be, the champion of true…
  308. Nov 4 Let us believe that pure thoughts, brave words and generous deeds can never die.
  309. Nov 5 Happy is the man who neither paints nor patches, veils nor veneers. Blessed is he who wears no mask.
  310. Nov 6 The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.
  311. Nov 7 In liberty extravagance is economy. Let us be just. Let us be generous to each other.
  312. Nov 8 Everywhere pain, disease and death—death that does not wait for bent forms and gray hairs, but clutches babes…
  313. Nov 9 There is no very great difference of opinion among civilized people as to what is or is not moral.
  314. Nov 10 There are mental misers—men who gather learning all their lives and keep it to themselves.
  315. Nov 11 The Bible is opposed to religious toleration—to religious liberty.
  316. Nov 12 Every field is a picture, a landscape; every landscape a poem; every flower a tender thought, and every…
  317. Nov 13 Liberty is the soil and light and rain—it is the plant and bud and flower and fruit—and in that sacred word…
  318. Nov 14 Everything that gives laughter to the world—laughter springing from good nature, that is the most wonderful…
  319. Nov 15 The free man, working for wife and children, gets his head and his hands in partnership.
  320. Nov 16 Morality is the harmony between act and circumstance. It is the melody of conduct. A wonderful statue is the…
  321. Nov 17 From the wondrous tree of life the buds and blossoms fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth…
  322. Nov 18 The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket, is hardly worth making.
  323. Nov 19 Let us remember that criminals are produced by conditions, and let us do what we can to change the conditions…
  324. Nov 20 All claims are put in the crucible of investigation—the object being to separate the true from the false.
  325. Nov 21 The dead leaves are all orthodox, while the new ones and the buds are all heretics.
  326. Nov 22 A mighty Nation bends above its honored graves, and pays to noble dust the tribute of its love.
  327. Nov 23 The working people should be protected by law; if they are not, the capitalists will require just as many…
  328. Nov 24 Party at best is only a means—the good of the country, the happiness of the people, the only end.
  329. Nov 25 No civilized man wishes to live where the mob is supreme.
  330. Nov 26 The moment it is admitted that all phenomena are within the domain of the natural, the necessity for a priest…
  331. Nov 27 Every minister is heretical just to the extent that intellect is above the average.
  332. Nov 28 The passion of the savage is uninfluenced by his thought, while the thought of the philosopher is…
  333. Nov 29 Most of the intellectual giants of the world have been nursed at the sad and loving breast of poverty.
  334. Nov 30 In the presence of demonstration there is no opportunity for the exercise of faith.
  335. Dec 1 Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin…
  336. Dec 2 All arts are born of the same spirit, and express like thoughts in different ways—that is to say, they…
  337. Dec 3 The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.
  338. Dec 4 Music is the sunshine—the climate—of the soul, and it floods the heart with a perfect June.
  339. Dec 5 I believe in heaven here and now—the heaven of health and good digestion—of strength and long life—of…
  340. Dec 6 Every industrious man adds to the wealth, not only of his nation, but to that of the world.
  341. Dec 7 Happiness is the result of all that is really right and sane.
  342. Dec 8 We are done with the supernatural. We are through with the miraculous and the impossible.
  343. Dec 9 There is one truth, however, that you must not forget, and that is, that every evil tends to correct and…
  344. Dec 10 Nothing can be more marvelous than the common and everyday facts of life.
  345. Dec 11 Some people are naturally suspicious. It is an infinitely mean trait in human nature. Suspicion is only…
  346. Dec 12 As man becomes civilized, educated, he finally has more confidence in his reason than in his eyes.
  347. Dec 13 Hunger falls upon its knees, and heaven, looked for through tears, is the mirage of misery. But prosperity…
  348. Dec 14 A Christian will not admit that a passage in the Bible is uninspired, until he is satisfied that it is untrue.
  349. Dec 15 The spiritual man lives to his ideal. He endeavors to make others happy.
  350. Dec 16 Miracles are not simply impossible, but they are unthinkable by any man capable of thinking.
  351. Dec 17 The laughter that died away beneath the touch of death is heard again and lips that fell to ashes long ago…
  352. Dec 18 Many utterances attributed to Christ shock my brain and heart. They are absurd and cruel.
  353. Dec 19 If the Bible is true, slavery is right, and the world should go back to the barbarism of the lash and chain.
  354. Dec 20 The people are beginning to think, to reason and to investigate. Slowly, painfully, but surely, the gods are…
  355. Dec 21 Every man is forced to admit that he does not agree with all the great men, living or dead.
  356. Dec 22 The real searcher after truth will not receive the old because it is old, or reject the new because it is new.
  357. Dec 23 Whoever attacks the popular falsehoods of his time will find that a lie defends itself by telling other lies.
  358. Dec 24 As a matter of fact, public men,—that is to say, men in office,—reflect the average intelligence of the…
  359. Dec 25 The sun is the god of benefits, of growth, of life, of warmth, of happiness, of joy. The sun is the…
  360. Dec 26 There is no more perfect picture on the earth, or within the imagination of man, than a mother holding in her…
  361. Dec 27 In the gathering gloom the fires slowly die, while memory dreams of youth, and hope sometimes mistakes the…
  362. Dec 28 Out on the wide waste seas, there drifts no spar. Over the desert of death the sphinx gazes forever, but…
  363. Dec 29 When the intelligent submit to the clamor of the many, anarchy begins and the Republic reaches the edge of…
  364. Dec 30 A great man throws pearls before swine, and the swine are sometimes changed to men.
  365. Dec 31 Right and wrong are not revelations from some supposed god, but have been discovered through the experience…
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