Influence Which Is Given On The Side

I Would Not Exchange My Freedom From Old Superstition, If I Were To Be Burned At The Stake Next Month, For All The Peace And Quiet Of Orthodoxy, If I Must Take The Orthodoxy With Peace And Quiet.

It Is Characteristic Of Genius To Be Hopeful And Aspiring. It Is Characteristic Of Genius To Break Up The Artificial Arrangements Of Conventionalism, And To View Mankind In True Perspective, In Their Gradations Of Inherent Rather Than Of Adventitious Worth. Genius Is Therefore Essentially Democratic, And Has Always Been So.

When Once Experience Taught Me That I Could Work When I Chose, And Within A Quarter Of An Hour Of My Determining To Do So, I Was Relieved, In A Great Measure, From Those Embarrassments And Depressions Which I See Afflicting Many An Author Who Waits For A Mood Instead Of Summoning It, And Is The Sport, Instead Of The Master, Of His Own Impressions And Ideas.

As The Astronomer Rejoices In New Knowledge Which Compels Him To Give Up The Dignity Of Our Globe As The Centre, The Pride, And Even The Final Cause Of The Universe, So Do Those Who Have Escaped From The Christian Mythology Enjoy Their Release From The Superstition Which Fails To Make Them Happy, Fails To Make Them Good, Fails To Make Them Wise, And Has Become As Great An Obstacle In The Way Of Progress As The Prior Mythologies Which It Took The Place Of Two Thousand Years Ago.

There Is No Theory Of A God, Of An Author Of Nature, Of An Origin Of The Universe, Which Is Not Utterly Repugnant To My Faculties. . .