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

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.

Just as he was slowly bringing order to his own internal life, he would also bring order to his language.

Fortune is for all, judgment is theirs who have won it for themselves.

It is all very beautiful and magical here - a quality which cannot be described. You have to live it and breathe it, let the sun bake into you.

I fought all my life for women to make their own choices, in their personal and professional lives. I made mine.

I can never tell when something is funny. I just have to do it onstage and find out.

Each of us has that right, that possibility, to invent ourselves daily.

Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom.

All your seriousness is about sandcastles. And you yourself will leave them one day, trampling them down, and you will not look back. The people who take it seriously miss the beauty of playfulness.

For those who are walking in their purpose, even the great tribulation will be a minor event. There will be far more attention on what Christ is doing than on what the antichrist is doing.

Mankind have their local attachments. They have a particular regard for the spot, in which they were born and nurtured.