“Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.”

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

The only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.

Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.

The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

It is the classic fallacy of our time that a moron run through a university and decorated with a Ph.D. will thereby cease to be a moron.

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.

The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Government’s great contribution to human wisdom is the discovery that the taxpayer has more than one pocket.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

One of the advantages of atheism is takes so little of your time.

It is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.

Atheism is just a way of clearing the space for better conversations.

I don’t say that I’m an atheist. I don’t like that term, because I think it mirrors the certitude of religion. I say I don’t know. And if you don’t know – and you don’t – just man up and say you don’t know. Don’t turn to silly stories and ancient myths.

Idiots must stop claiming that atheism is a religion. Religion is defined as the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power. And atheism is… precisely not that. Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.

The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with their mouths and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.

Atheists have just as much civil right to teach atheism as Christians have to teach Christianity; agnostics have just as much right to teach agnosticism as Christians have to teach their religion.

The parents have a right to say that no teacher paid by their money shall rob their children of faith in God and send them back to their homes skeptical, or infidels, or agnostics, or atheists.