“Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.”

In order to have enough freedom, it is necessary to have too much.

Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve.

The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.

Each child should be more intelligent than his parents.

The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.

The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.

Great wealth often curses all who touch it.

One cannot live through a long stretch of years without forming some philosophy of life.

The purpose of man is like the purpose of a pollywog – to wiggle along as far as he can without dying; or, to hang to life until death takes him.

I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend, than be one.

Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas.

It is bigotry for public schools to teach only one theory of origins.

There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men and to excuse men for crucifying each other.

The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.

Any one who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded.

The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries.

Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits.

The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.

Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession’s phlegm, and needs no ancestors.

Religion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance.

Indeed, the crowning proof of their valour and their strength is that they keep up their superiority without harm to others.

Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values.

So as you go into battle, remember your ancestors and remember your descendants.

We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite.