"The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.
"It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action—it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.
"To read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in the heart of man.
"The man does not exist who can say I have persecuted him, or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil.
"Of all the tyrants that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.
"The belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man.
"My own opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in doing good, and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy, will be happy hereafter.
"The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere. The practical part consists in our doing good to each other.
"No man ought to make a living by religion. One person can not act religion for another—every person must act for himself.
"One good school-master is of more use than a hundred priests. Let us propagate morality, unfettered by superstition.