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

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.

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

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

I’d be glad to go out on a limb with thoseWho want nothing beyond what the wind bestows, Were I not bound to roots, dug in deep to bearNever being done grasping for light and air

When the hypocrisy of life appears we often fail to recognise it or the question it raises

I... keep trying to find a way to become what I'd like to be and what I could be if... if only there were no other people in the world.

Bad gains are true losses.

You can have, be or do, anything you want.

We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.

If I have to die, I want to combust in the middle of one of my classes.

He continued to be an infant long after he ceased to be a prodigy.

If we had adhered to the concept of connectedness, then we would not have created nuclear weapons, huge armies and global warming.

We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.