God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism.

The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.

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.

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

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.

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.

Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.

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

One religion is as true as another.

Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in mixed company.

Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.

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

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