In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

Secularism is a religion, a religion that is understood. It has no mysteries, no mumblings, no priests, no ceremonies, no falsehoods, no miracles, and no persecutions.

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.

Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? Yes, we all know it. That is the time all religions tell the truth - each of the other.

Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of progress, the enemy of education and the assassin of freedom.

The myth of hell represents all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable.

Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.

The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

Never underestimate the power of words to heal and reconcile relationships.

I think it's always best to be who you are.

Fire, fear, foes! Awake!

I begin my pictures under the effect of a shock which I feel and which makes me escape from reality... I need a point of departure, even if it's only a speck of dust or a flash of light.

We are our own aptest deceiver.

We should be building great things that don't exist.

I've always seen L.A. as a giant kind of laboratory for ideas in a caldron for concepts where you can try anything you want to and if it fizzles, so what, you try something else.

I used to work in a record store. I'm kind of a record nerd.

The whites are the same everywhere. I see them every day.

The hues of bliss more brightly glow, Chastis'd by sabler tints of woe.