Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.

God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism.

Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.

The freedom or immunity from coercion in matters religious, which is the endowment of persons as individuals, is also to be recognized as their right when they act in community. Religious communities are a requirement of the social nature both of man and of religion itself.

The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than in the Church.

Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.

Educate people without religion and you make them but clever devils.

The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them.

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.