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

So long as one believes in God, one has the right to do the Good in order to be moral.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.

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.

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

The important thing, I think, is not to be bitter. You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. I think that the worst thing you could say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever. After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death.

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 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.

I can’t see (or feel) the conflict between love and religion. To me they’re the same thing.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.

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

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.