ORIENT PEARLS AS RANDOM STRUNG
I do not believe that Christians are as bad as their creeds.
The highest crime against a creed is to change it. Reformation is treason.
A believer is a bird in a cage, a free-thinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing.
All that is good in our civilization is the result of commerce, climate, soil, geographical position.
The heretics have not thought and suffered and died in vain. Every heretic has been, and is, a ray of light.
No man ever seriously attempted to reform a Church without being cast out and hunted down by the hounds of hypocrisy.
After all, the poorest bargain that a human being can make, is to give his individuality for what is called respectability.
On every hand are the enemies of individuality and mental freedom. Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
There can be nothing more utterly subversive of all that is really valuable than the suppression of honest thought.