Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.

Religion as a science, as a study, is the greatest and healthiest exercise that the human mind can have.

Here is God's purpose - for God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

I find distasteful the traditional idea of Christianity which preaches the resurrection of the body. Frankly, I see my body as more of a limitation than a virtue, and I will be glad to be free of it rather than having to continue to cart it around. I prefer to believe that souls can exist independently from bodies.

The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that have received-only what you have given.

How can the heart travel to God, when it is chained by its desires?

He who knoweth his own self, knoweth God.

Though wrong gratifies in the moment, good yields its gifts over a lifetime.

I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, He can work through anyone.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.

It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort. It's not the sort of comfort they supply there.

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn't the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

Hope is a good thing - maybe the best thing, and no good thing ever dies

The theological virtue of charity is the mysterious power, communicated by grace, to love as God loves.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.