Every person of learning is finally his own teacher.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

I am against justice … whenever it is carried out by a mob.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

artists often lie behind on the field long after the art combine, the broad-bladed harvester of informed criticism, has mowed, bailed, and stored the crop.

A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: "Wife wanted". Next day he received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: "You can have mine."

I couldn't settle in Italy - it was like living in a foreign country.

The only absurdity in which I find equally immense compassion and morality is Christianity - though the compassion is outlandish and the morality is blemished.

I think that a movie can only be an adjunct or only a supplement to books, to different points of view, to scholars, historians and your own teachers.

Death comes to all. His cold and sapless hand Waves o'er the world, and beckons us away. Who shall resist the summons?

The rigid cause themselves to be broken; the pliable cause themselves to be bound.