“Forbear to spew out reason from your mind, but rather ponder everything with keen judgment; and if it seems true, own yourself vanquished, but, if it is false, gird up your loins to fight.”

Too often in time past, religion has brought forth criminal and shameful actions… How many evils has religion caused?

The nature of the universe has by no means been made through divine power, seeing how great are the faults that mar it.

Such crimes has superstition caused.

Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs.

Time changes the nature of the whole world; Everything passes from one state to another And nothing stays like itself.

One thing is made of another, and nature allows no new creation except at the price of death.

I own with reason: for, if men but knew Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong By some device unconquered to withstand Religions and the menacings of seers.

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.

If one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods.

Victory puts us on a level with heaven.

Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by religion.

What came from the earth returns back to the earth, and the spirit that was sent from heaven, again carried back, is received into the temple of heaven.

If God can do anything he can make a stone so heavy that even he can’t lift it. Then there is something God cannot do, he cannot lift the stone. Therefore God does not exist.

If men saw that a term was set to their troubles, they would find strength in some way to withstand the hocus-pocus and intimidations of the prophets.

All things obey fixed laws.

Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.

I know that we often tremble at an empty terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery.

One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.

I have this theory that, depending on your attitude, your life doesn’t have to become this ridiculous charade that it seems so many people end up living.

Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray.

belief is necessarily something false that diverts and suffocates effective production.

Halloween is a day when we all get to fool people into thinking we’re someone else. Or as Mitt Romney calls it, campaigning.

False hope really makes you cynical.