Blasphemy

“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.”

“One can only blaspheme if one believes.”

“You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time, but I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime.”

“Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being... We attack not a person but a belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy.”

“Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.”

“Never talk of that which is within you; God is in us, as well as in you: never make a flourish of what is in you; for the fear of God is before our eyes as well as yours, and what we do, we shall have comfort in, in that it is according to the laws of England, the the rules of which we are sworn to observe, and every man will do righteous things as well as you.”

“Blasphemy is a padlock which hypocrisy tries to put on the lips of all honest men.”

“For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument.”

“It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.”

“How has the church in every age, when in authority, defended itself? Always by a statute against blasphemy, against argument, against free speech. And there never was such a statute that did not stain the book that it was in and that did not certify to the savagery of the men who passed it.”

“By making a statute and by defining blasphemy, the church sought to prevent discussion — sought to prevent argument — sought to prevent a man giving his honest opinion. Certainly a tenet, a dogma, a doctrine, is safe when hedged about by a statute that prevents your speaking against it. In the silence of slavery it exists. It lives because lips are locked. It lives because men are slaves.”

“Now, gentlemen, what is blasphemy? Of course nobody knows what it is, unless he takes into consideration where he is. What is blasphemy in one country would be a religious exhortation in another.”

“By force you can make hypocrites — men who will agree with you from the teeth out, and in their hearts hate you. We want no more hypocrites. We have enough in every community. And how are you going to keep from having more? By having the air free, — by wiping from your statute books such miserable and infamous laws as this.”

“Blasphemy is the word that the majority hisses into the ear of the few.”

“Whoever increases the sum of human joy, is a worshiper. He who adds to the sum of human misery, is a blasphemer.”

“Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.”