Excerpts from Robert Ingersol:

"Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart -- builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody -- for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods. "

"The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called "faith." What man, whoever thinks, can believe that blood can appease God? And yet, our entire system of religion is based upon that belief. The Jews pacified Jehovah with the blood of animals, and according to the Christian system, the blood of Jesus softened the heart of God a little, and rendered possible the salvation of a fortunate few. It is hard to conceive how the human mind can give assent to such terrible ideas, or how any sane man can read the Bible and still believe in the doctrine of inspiration."
Robert G. Ingersol,
"The Gods", 1872

I had rather think of those I have loved and lost, as having returned to earth, as having become part of the elemental wealth of the world, I would rather think of them as unconscious dust, I would rather dream of them as gurgling in the streams, floating in the clouds, bursting in the foam of light upon the shores of worlds. I would rather think of them as lost visions of a forgotten night, than to have the faintest fear that their naked souls have been clutched by a Christian God.

For thousands of years men have been writing the real Bible, and it is being written from day to day, and it will never be finished while Man has life.

All the facts that we know, all the truly recorded events, all the discoveries and inventions, all the wonderful machines that whose wheels and levers seem to think, all the poems, crystals from the brain, flowers from the heart, all the songs of love and joy, of smiles and tears, the great dramas in Imagination's world, the wondrous paintings, miracles of form and color, of light and shade, the marvelous marbles that seem to live and breathe, the secrets told by rock and star, by dust and flower, by rain and snow, by frost and flame, by winding stream and desert sand, by mountain range and billowed seas. All the wisdom that lengthens and ennobles life - all that avoids or cures disease, or conquers pain - all just and perfect laws and rules that guide and shape our lives, all thoughts that feed the flames of love, the music that transfigures, enraptures and enthralls, the victories of heart and brain, the miracles that hands have wrought, the deft and cunning hands of those who worked for wife and child, the histories of noble deeds, of brave and useful men, of faithful loving wives, of quenchless mother love, of conflicts for the right, of sufferings for the truth, of all the best that all the men and women of the world have said, and thought, and done through all the years. These treasures of the heart and brain - these are the Sacred Scriptures of the human race.

It is to him who masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who enslave men by violence, it is to him who understands the world, not to those who disfigure it, that we owe our reverence.

Wherever these human beings may be who have shared our love, whatever landscape soothes their soul, whatever breeze cools their brow, their country is our country too. Each square foot of land occupied by a man of good will is part of our country.

Christ never wrote a single solitary word. It has always seems to me that a being coming from another world, with a message of infinite importance to mankind ...

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament he would be a criminal. If he would strictly follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane. Pious ignorance always regards intelligence as a kind of blasphemy. If we are ever judged at all it will be by our actions, and not by our beliefs. If Christ was good enough to die for me, he certainly will not be bad enough to damn me for honestly failing to believe in his divinity. Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an infinite being wants his praise! "

Debunking Creationism aka "Stupid Design"
(link to local copy)