"No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere : I see Heaven's glories shine, And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear."

"Even in the slightest breeze you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree; this we understand is its prayer to the Great Spirit, for not only men, but all things and all beings pray to Him continually in different ways."

"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion."

"All things are implicated with one another, and the bond is holy; and there is hardly anything unconnected with any other things. For things have been co-ordinated, and they combine to make up the same universe. For there is one universe made up of all things, and one God who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, and one reason."

"All that we refrain from and all that we do, let us not do or refrain from merely because it seems to the multitude somehow honorable or base, but because it is forbidden by reason and the god within us."

"Civilized people—Muslims, Christians, and Jews—all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator."

"I saw my Lord with the Eye of my heart, And I said: Truly there is no doubt that it is You. It is You that I see in everything; And I do not see You through anything (but You)."

"Twenty times in the course of my late reading have I been on the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!!!" But in this exclamation I would have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly. Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell. So far from believing in the total and universal depravity of human nature, I believe there is no individual totally depraved. The most abandoned scoundrel that ever existed, never yet wholly extinguished his conscience, and while conscience remains there is some religion."

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."

"Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument."

"Whoever increases the sum of human joy, is a worshiper. He who adds to the sum of human misery, is a blasphemer."

"What is blasphemy? I will give you a definition; I will give you my thought upon this subject. What is real blasphemy? To live on the unpaid labor of other men — that is blasphemy. To enslave your fellow-man, to put chains upon his body — that is blasphemy. To enslave the minds of men, to put manacles upon the brain, padlocks upon the lips — that is blasphemy. To deny what you believe to be true, to admit to be true what you believe to be a lie — that is blasphemy. To strike the weak and unprotected, in order that you may gain the applause of the ignorant and superstitious mob — that is blasphemy. To persecute the intelligent few, at the command of the ignorant many — that is blasphemy. To forge chains, to build dungeons, for your honest fellow-men — that is blasphemy. To pollute the souls of children with the dogma of eternal pain — that is blasphemy. To violate your conscience — that is blasphemy. The jury that gives an unjust verdict, and the judge who pronounces an unjust sentence, are blasphemers. The man who bows to public opinion against his better judgment and against his honest conviction, is a blasphemer. Why should we fear our fellow-men? Why should not each human being have the right, so far as thought and its expression are concerned, of all the world? What harm can come from an honest interchange of thought?"

"Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth. Blasphemy is what a withered last year's leaf says to a this year's bud. Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice. Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless. And let me say now, that the crime of blasphemy, as set out in this statute, is impossible. No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit blasphemy by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God, or a Holy Ghost, or a Son of God. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed."

"Blasphemy is the word that the majority hisses into the ear of the few."

"By force you can make hypocrites — men who will agree with you from the teeth out, and in their hearts hate you. We want no more hypocrites. We have enough in every community. And how are you going to keep from having more? By having the air free, — by wiping from your statute books such miserable and infamous laws as this."

"Now, gentlemen, what is blasphemy? Of course nobody knows what it is, unless he takes into consideration where he is. What is blasphemy in one country would be a religious exhortation in another."

"By making a statute and by defining blasphemy, the church sought to prevent discussion — sought to prevent argument — sought to prevent a man giving his honest opinion. Certainly a tenet, a dogma, a doctrine, is safe when hedged about by a statute that prevents your speaking against it. In the silence of slavery it exists. It lives because lips are locked. It lives because men are slaves."

"How has the church in every age, when in authority, defended itself? Always by a statute against blasphemy, against argument, against free speech. And there never was such a statute that did not stain the book that it was in and that did not certify to the savagery of the men who passed it."

"It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike."

"For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument."

"Blasphemy is a padlock which hypocrisy tries to put on the lips of all honest men."

"Churches are becoming political organizations... It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy — making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind. Surely politicians could be better employed than in passing laws to protect the literary reputation of the Jewish God."

"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us."

"To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place -- not to mention the "ethnic cleansing" presently being performed by Christians in our world -- and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women. (This comprehensive statement was arrived at by examining the statutes of those seven states that have remained in the Dark Ages, so that I might satisfy their definitions of blasphemy.)"

""..Religious tolerance should be at the heart of secularism, but going on killing innocent people is not something that should be endured in the garb of blasphemy...The supremacist, exclusionary, and barbarian nature of ... has become a hazard to the safety of the common man and the secular fabric of this nation, and we have failed to address the very root of this bizarre problem as a state. A state that has failed to answer these real questions:..How is the ... state planning to provide justice to the innocent people who succumbed to Islamic fanaticism in the name of blasphemy? Are there going to be enough laws to prevent such acts of terror? ...Do we deserve to be worried about our children posting something on social media because, literally, it can get them killed?...Whether in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Islamic republics like Pakistan, or secular democracies like India and France, Islam’s flirtations with blasphemy are soaked in blood..."

"Never talk of that which is within you; God is in us, as well as in you: never make a flourish of what is in you; for the fear of God is before our eyes as well as yours, and what we do, we shall have comfort in, in that it is according to the laws of England, the the rules of which we are sworn to observe, and every man will do righteous things as well as you."

"God knows how often all of us have taken the great name of God in vain: or have said more than becomes us, and talked of things we should not do."

"Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought."

"In all 6,236 verses of the Quran, there is not a single verse calling on Muslims to silence blasphemers by force. Not in 1989, when Khomeini called on believers to kill Salman Rushdie, not in 1992, when the Egyptian intellectual Farag Foda was shot in Egypt, and still not in 2011. The Quran is immutable, and all it does is tell believers to respond to blasphemy with dignity. But the doctrine of death for apostasy had taken on a life of its own in the previous two decades and had made its way back to Pakistan. The cultural war that Khomeini had started with his fatwa had seriously restrained the boundaries of expression. Worse: in the time that had elapsed since the assassination of Foda in Cairo in 1992, the reference points had moved. No one called it terrorism anymore; no one mourned the victims as martyrs of the nation, as Foda had been mourned. Few dared to protest against those who killed in the name of Islam, afraid they would meet the same fate. Everything had shifted to the right; the old extremes were the new center—or so it felt."

"I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish."

"Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being... We attack not a person but a belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy."

"You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time, but I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime."

"When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. 'If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other. It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything. God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play."

"One can only blaspheme if one believes."

"Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."

"If I had been a Heathen, I'd have crowned Neaera's curls, And filled my life with love affairs, My house with dancing girls."

"Very many Americans have an offensive habit of referring to natives as `heathen.' Mahommedans and Hindus are heathen alike in their eyes."

"When the Christian Sunday schools teach the children that ‘the heathens cannot enjoy the blessings of salvation’ they foster an attitude in the impressionable child mind that all heathens or non-Christians must be had, ignoble, or inferior and there must be something fundamentally wrong in them. This attitude grows; and only a few, in their maturity after great efforts, succeed to free themselves from this prejudice based upon ignorance and false teachings."

"The editor perhaps may consider himself justified by numerous precedents among the several partisans of different Christian sects in applying the name of heathen to one who takes the Precepts of Jesus as his principal guide in matters of religious and civic duties; as Roman Catholics bestow the appellation of heretics or infidels on all classes of Protestants; and the Protestants do not spare the title idolater to Roman Catholics; Trinitarians deny the name Christian to Unitarians, while the latter retort by stigmatising the worshippers of the son of man as Pagans who adore a created and dependent being."

"Though every prospect pleases And only man is vile. In vain with lavish kindness The gifts of God are strewn, The heathen in his blindness Bows down to wood and stone."

"O father, father Gone from us, lost to us, The church lies bereft, Alone, Desecrated, desolated. And the heathen shall build On the ruins Their world without God. I see it. I see it."

"HEATHEN, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel."

"Hinter Kronstadt hat das deutsche Vaterunser ein Ende."

"Das Vaterunser ist der grösste Märtyrer auf Erden. Denn jedermann plagt's und missbraucht's."

"Das einzige, was mich zur Zeit noch daran hindert, wieder in die katholische Kirche einzutreten, sind die eingedeutschten Messen und das renovierte Vaterunser. Der Text, den ich noch gelernt hatte, war in einer unantastbaren Sprache abgefasst, auf einer literarischen Höhe, die jedem sofort vermittelte, hier radebrecht kein reformfreudiger Studienrat, hier spricht Gott."

""Seele bin ich, dem Himmelsmeere entstiegen, // Auch der Götter Nektar, Hu-Gott, der das Böse verabscheut. // Wahrheit-Gerechtigkeit folgend streb ich nach Gutem. // Mein heiliger Name, der Name der göttlichen Seele"

"Ich bin das Heute. // Ich bin das Gestern. // Ich bin das Morgen. // Meine wiederholten Geburten durchschreitend // Bleibe ich kraftvoll jung."

"Ich bin Horus von Jahrmillionen! // Zu euch entsend ich die Glut meiner Strahlen, // Auf daß eure Herzen sich kehren zu mir."

""Durch verschiedene Wandlungen schreitet // Und suchet mühsam den Weg, // Tappend im Dunklen."