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“The usual is always mediocre. When nature takes it into her head to make a man, she fits him with her own equipment and educates him in her own school.”

Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

“Much of his work he did while confined to his bed. He was always an invalid, always obliged to take great care of himself, living constantly with death just before him, never idle a moment for fear his work would not be done. Probably no man ever lived who assailed the Church and the State with the same wit and keenness that was always at Voltaire's command; and yet in spite of this he managed to live comfortably, accumulate riches and die in peace.”

Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

“I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.”

Clarence Darrow

Speech in Toronto (1930); as quoted in "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996) by James A. Haught
As quoted in Jesus: Myth Or Reality? (2006) by Ian Curtis
Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either.
As quoted in The New York Times (19 April 1936)
Variant: I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose.

“Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speaking, there is no such book. To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound into one volume. These books are written by many people at different times, and no one knows the time or the identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin of things. Between the first and the last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passed since the discovery of America by Columbus.”

Clarence Darrow

Why I Am An Agnostic (1929)

“I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man — public opinion.”

Clarence Darrow

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 27 "The Loeb-Leopold Tragedy", p. 232

“No nation can be really great that is held together by Gatling guns, and no true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear.”

Clarence Darrow

Source: Resist Not Evil (1904), p. 40

“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.”

Clarence Darrow

This quote was attributed to Darrow in the biography Clarence Darrow for the Defence (1949), but its earliest known source is from a journal entry of George Sand from 1835.
Misattributed

“The truth is always modern and there never comes a time when it is safe to give it voice.”

Clarence Darrow

Voltaire (1916)

“The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.”

Clarence Darrow

Address to the court in People v. Lloyd (1920)

“Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.”

Clarence Darrow

As quoted in Foundations of Democracy: A Series of Debates (1939) by Thomas Vernor Smith and Robert Alphonso Taft, p. 10