59 quotes
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.
Foundations of Democracy: A Series of Debates (1939)
One believes in the truthfulness of a man because of his long experience with the man, and because the man has always told a consistent story. But no man has told so consistent a story as nature.
Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
An agnostic is a doubter. The word is generally applied to those who doubt the verity of accepted religious creeds of faiths. Everyone is an agnostic as to the beliefs or creeds they do not accept.
Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. I’m beginning to believe it.
Clarence Darrow for the Defense (1941)
That men should ‘turn the other cheek,’ should ‘love their enemies,’ should ‘resist not evil,’ has ever seemed fine to teach to children, to preach on Sundays, to round a period in a senseless oratorical flight; but it has been taken for granted that these sentiments cannot furnish the real foundation for strong characters or great states.
Resist Not Evil (1904)
As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever. The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.
Arguments in the Case of the Communist Labor Party (1920)
Any one who thinks is an agnostic about something, otherwise he must believe that he is possessed of all knowledge. And the proper place for such a person is in the madhouse or the home for the feeble-minded.
Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
It is not for the world to judge, but to crown them all alike. Each and all lived out their own being, did their work in their own way, and carried a reluctant, stupid humanity to greater possibilities and grander heights.
Voltaire (1916)
With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.
There are two things that kill a genius — a fatal disease and contentment. When a man is contented he goes to sleep. Voltaire had no chance to be contented, and so he wrote eternally and unceasingly, more than any other man in the history of the world.
Voltaire (1916)
I was truly sorry for Mr. Bryan. But I consoled myself by thinking of the years through which he had busied himself tormenting intelligent professors with impudent questions about their faith, and seeking to arouse the ignoramuses and bigots to drive them out of their positions.
In formulating a superman he is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern ordinary men. He is not liable for anything he may do, whereas others would be, except for the one crime that it is possible for him to commit, to make a mistake.
Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I'm not worried about my soul.
The lands and houses, the goods and merchandise and the money of the world are owned by a very few. All the rest in some way serve that few for so much as the law of life and trade permit them to exact.
Pensions are the favors of the powerful, and dangerous to any great intellect. It is only here and there down throughout the ages that a Voltaire is born who does not fall a victim to their blandishments.
Voltaire (1916)
To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess.
Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.
Misattributed
Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.
Misattributed This quote is from Ethel Lina White's The Wheel Spins (1936)
I don’t like spinach, and I’m glad I don’t, because if I liked it I’d eat it, and I’d just hate it.
Misattributed This quote was attributed to Darrow in the biography Clarence Darrow for the Defence (1949)