“In the duel of sex, woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.”

“There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portuguese.”

“Nevertheless, it is the Christian theory that it is only a regard for this Being -- partly a trembling fear and partly a kind of conciliation represented to be love -- that keeps the human race from roaring downhill to villainy and disaster. Nor are theologians daunted by the obvious fact that many open and even ribald skeptics are not going that way, but, on the contrary, show a considerably higher degree of virtue than the Christian average. Their answer ... is that the moral sense of every such blameless candidate for Hell 'is a kind of parasitic growth upon the otherworldliness of the society in which he lives.' ... Even men who should know better indulge in this confusion between the religious impulse and common decency. ... But this is surely going beyond the plain facts. A man may be truly religious without imagining God as good at all, and he may be good without believing that there is any moral order in the universe or even that God exists. Religion does not necessarily make men better citizens, whether of their neighborhoods or of the world.”

“If the average man is made in God's image, then such a man as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God....”

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

“Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn’t believe he is dead.”

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. ”