“All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”

I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man — public opinion.

The purpose of life is to live it.

Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either.

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.

It is just as often a great misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.

Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document?

If a man is happy in America, it is considered he is doing something wrong.

We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.

The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery.

Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions.

As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.

An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.

Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.

None meet life honestly and few heroically.

I never go to funerals. To me a person is dead when he breathes for the last time. After that, your memories should be personal.

Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

The worst thing to do is to die while reading LIFE magazine.

Give me liberty or give me death.

I don’t want the corpses of flowers about me.

The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.