It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

The Bible is a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology.

The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies

Man is a marvelous curiosity â? he thinks he is the Creator's pet â? he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea.

God's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.

What God lacks is convictions -- stability of character. He ought to be a Presbyterian or a Catholic or something -- not try to be everything.

[b]A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.[/b]

If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian.

There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him -- early.

The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition.

Some years ago on the gold coins we used to trust in God. It think it was in 1863 that some genius suggested that it be put on the gold and silver coins which circulated among the rich. They didn't put it on the nickels and coppers because they didn't think the poor folks had any trust in God.... If I remember rightly, the President required or ordered the removal of that sentence from the coins. Well, I didn't see that the statement ought to remain there. It wasn't true. But I think it would better read, "Within certain judicious limitations we trust in God, and if there isn't enough room on the coin for this, why enlarge the coin.

Of the 417 commandments, only a single one of the 417 has found ministerial obedience; multiply and replenish the earth. To it sinner & saint, scholar & ignoramus, Christian & savage are alike loyal.

The two Testaments are interesting, each in its own way. The Old one gives us a picture of these people's Deity as he was before he got religion, the other one gives us a picture of him as he appeared afterward.

God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New -- the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance.

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.

The inventor of their heaven empties into it all the nations of the earth, in one common jumble. All are on an equality absolute, no one of them ranking another; they have to be "brothers"; they have to mix together, pray together, harp together, hosannah together -- whites, niggers, Jews, everybody -- there's no distinction. Here in the earth all nations hate each other, and every one of them hates the Jew. Yet every pious person adores that heaven and wants to get into it. He really does. And when he is in a holy rapture he thinks he thinks that if he were only there he would take all the populace to his heart, and hug, and hug, and hug!