Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.

Secularism is a religion, a religion that is understood. It has no mysteries, no mumblings, no priests, no ceremonies, no falsehoods, no miracles, and no persecutions.

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.

Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? Yes, we all know it. That is the time all religions tell the truth - each of the other.

Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of progress, the enemy of education and the assassin of freedom.

The myth of hell represents 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.

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.

Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.

The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.

If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.

You cannot get PTSD from reading a book or from hearing a story, even repeated stories over and over.

Really a bad guy is more interesting, dramatically, than the good guy.

Lord Bacon makes beauty to consist of grace and motion.

My thing is to gain the respect as an actor, as a professional, and the friendship and everything else will happen from there.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled myself closer to him until my lips touched his.

When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.

Pass through knowledge to arrive at simplicity.

Trotsky was essentially a Western mind. Lenin was a Russian, and unlike most other revolutionary exiles, wherever he went he was a Russian.