Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.

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.

Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving toward the watcher on the shore.

If I want to catch the damn worm I get outta bed.

Low-grade pain can be so rooted in your being that the pain begins to look like you, and you begin to look like the pain — it becomes your identity.

It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas.

Man makes religion, religion does not make man

The unknown is the province of the student; it is the field for his lifes adventure, and it is a wide field full of beckonings

Dad at breakfast today being very quiet. I notice he is clean shaven. I said to him, "Vati, what has happened to the little beaver that used to live on the end of your chin?

Feel exhilarated by this whole process. You want to be high, happy, in tune.

For David Parker and Daniel Parker, with the respect and admiration of their father, who grew up with them.

The work doesn't begin until you get tired!