If I cannot smoke cigars in Heaven, I shall not go.
Mark Twain Quotes
Concentration of power in a political machine is bad; and an Established Church is only a political machine; it was invented for that; it is nursed, cradled, preserved for that; it is an enemy to human liberty, and does no good which it could not better do in a split-up and scattered condition.
The approach of Christmas brings harrassment and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and […]
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. […]
The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive, but in spite of their religion, not because of it.
If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian.
It is believed by everyone that when he was in heaven he was stern, hard, resentful, jealous and cruel, but that when he came down to earth, he became the opposite – sweet, gentle merciful, forgiving. He was a thousand billion times crueler than ever he was in the Old Testament – Meek and gentle? […]
You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient “people say”. In all my seventy-two years and a half I have never come across such another ass as this human race is.
Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence – stuffed and in a museum.
I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.
