One religion is as true as another.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The freedom or immunity from coercion in matters religious, which is the endowment of persons as individuals, is also to be recognized as their right when they act in community. Religious communities are a requirement of the social nature both of man and of religion itself.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.

Whatsoever is, is in God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

An irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods.

The state dictates and coerces; religion teaches and persuades. The state enacts laws; religion gives commandments. The state is armed with physical force and makes use of it if need be; the force of religion is love and benevolence.

The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than in the Church.