“There is no more reason to believe that man descended from an inferior animal than there is to believe that a stately mansion has descended from a small cottage.”

You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

Facts mean nothing unless they are rightly understood, rightly related and rightly interpreted.

There can be no settlement of a great cause without discussion, and people will not discuss a cause until their attention is drawn to it.

The greatest things ever done on Earth have been done little by little.

Agnosticism is the natural attitude of the evolutionist. How can a brute mind comprehend spiritual things?

Christ has made of death a narrow starlit strip between the companionships of yesterday and the reunions of tomorrow.

If evolution wins, Christianity goes!

None so little enjoy themselves, and are such burdens to themselves, as those who have nothing to do. Only the active have the true relish of life.

If the Bible and the microscope do not agree, the microscope is wrong.

The great political questions are in their final analysis great moral questions.

No greater victory can be won by citizens or soldiers than to transform temporary foes into permanent friends.

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.

Our government conceived in freedom and purchased with blood can be preserved only by constant vigilance.

The Rock of Ages is more important than the age of rocks.

The speech of one who knows what he is talking about and means what he says-it is thought on fire.

I have been so satisfied with the Christian religion that I have spent no time trying to find arguments against it. I am not afraid now that you will show me any. I feel that I have enough information to live and die by.

Animals are my friends and I don’t eat my friends.

No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.

Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human.

If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.

Man is the religious animal.

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.