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.

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.

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

Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in mixed company.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

So long as one believes in God, one has the right to do the Good in order to be moral.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

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.