What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

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.

Lincoln learned to summon the passions, but he never addressed his audience as sweethearts.

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose-a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

A person who has no secrets is a liar. We always fold ourselves away from others just enough to preserve a secret or two, something that we cannot share without destroying our inner landscape.

Acting is very start and stop.

I mean people have compared us to like the Grateful Dead and all these like psychedelic sixties bands.

The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed.

I think it is very important in this business to be an individual

If the heart is hardened, the intellect is darkened.

In a novel, you can always go back and make it look like you knew what you were doing all along before the thing goes out and gets published.

Someone's writing down your mistakes, someone's documenting your downfall.