The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

The environment that we call society is created by past generations; we accept it, as it helps us to maintain our greed, possessiveness, illusion.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

God’s Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

I was reared in the church, in the Presbyterian Church.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

To try to become happy is to try to build a machine with no other specifications than it shall run noiselessly.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

It’s not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

I think what motivates people is not great hate, but great love for other people.

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly out of proportion to the use they commonly serve.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

What was God doing before the divine creation?

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

Do not give in too much to feelings. A overly sensitive heart is an unhappy possession on this shaky earth.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

We don’t have to let extremists define us.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.