“It would be better for us to have some doubts in an honest pursuit of truth, than it would be for us to be certain about something that was not true.”

“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.”

“In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something else.”

“Christianity is a life, not a doctrine… I'm not saying never doubt or question. The Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. I'm saying you must be sure that the doubts and questions are your own.”

“the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.”

“Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.”

“I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.”

“A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.”

“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got used to it.”

“It is extraordinary that nobody nowadays under the stress of great troubles is turned into stone or a bird or a tree or some inanimate object; they used to undergo such metamorphoses in ancient times (or so they say), though whether that is myth or a true story I know not. Maybe it would be better to change one's nature into something that lacks all feeling, rather than be so sensitive to evil. Had that been possible, these calamities would in all probability have turned me to stone”