Great Throughts Treasury

"When the anonymous masses enter history, it is chiefly to be slaughtered in battle, to die of famine or privation – to illustrate the failures of their betters… We have the mighty pyramids, but no firsthand account of the feelings of the wretches who built them."

"To say that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer."

"Organized religion is too respectable, too much at home in America, and so too much inclined to abdicate its responsibility as a judge of society."

"It has become too easy to see that the luckless men of the past lived by mistakes, even absurd beliefs, so we may well fail in a decent respect for them, and forget that historians of the future will point out that we too lived by myths."

"Religion can no longer rest its claims on a dogmatic supernaturalism, because any dogma that is irreconcilable with tested knowledge must be rejected. [..] a sentence [..] sums up the dark and deadly pages of Chistian history: 'If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.'"

"The doctrine of the material efficacy of prayer reduces the Creator to a cosmic bellhop of a not very bright or reliable kind."