Clarence Darrow (1857 – 1938)
American lawyer, best known for having defended teenaged thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14 year old Bobby Franks (1924) and defending John T Scopes in the so-called "Monkey" Trial (1925), opposing William Jennings Bryan.
The objector and the rebel who raises his voice against what he believes to be the injustice of the present and the wrongs of the past is the one who hunches the world along.
The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.
The purpose of life is living. Men and women should get the most they can out of their lives. The smallest, tiniest intellect may be quite as valuable to society as the largest. It may be still more valuable to itself: it may have all the capacity for enjoyment that the wisest has. The purpose of man is like the purpose of the pollywog — to wriggle along as far as he can without dying; or to hang on until death takes him.
No nation can be really great that is held together by Gatling guns, and no true loyalty can be induced and kept through fear. p. 40
Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.
Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought - even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth. p. 12
I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom.
Whatever else he was during his life, he was never dull, and the world forgives almost anything but stupidity.
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. I’m beginning to believe it.
Hell, that's why they make erasers.
Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.
No iconoclast can possibly escape the severest criticism. If he is poor he is against existing things because he cannot succeed. If he is rich, he is not faithful to his ideals. The world always demands of a prophet a double standard. He must live a life consistent with his dreams, and at the same time must obey the conventions of the world. He cannot be judged either by one or the other, but must be judged by both.
Pensions are the favors of the powerful, and dangerous to any great intellect. It is only here and there down throughout the ages that a Voltaire is born who does not fall a victim to their blandishments.
As long as the world shall last, there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.
I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.
Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes has burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile but hers.
That men should ‘turn the other cheek,’ should ‘love their enemies,’ should ‘resist not evil,’ has ever seemed fine to teach to children, to preach on Sundays, to round a period in a senseless oratorical flight; but it has been taken for granted that these sentiments cannot furnish the real foundation for strong characters or great states. p. 13
Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either.
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.
The nation that would to-day disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrong from its hostile and unwilling serfs. p. 27