Clarence Darrow

"I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either. I don't believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose."

"I have always felt that doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God was the end of wisdom."

"Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads. Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place. Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows?... No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right. How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads... Why did they kill little Bobby Franks?Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood.. . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain"

"Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom."

"The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries."

"The trouble with law is lawyers."

"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means."

"I am an agnostic I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President I'm beginning to believe it."

"The pursuit of truth will set you free even if you never catch up with it."

"If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think."

"History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history."

"Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas."

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."

"The law does not pretend to punish everything that is dishonest. That would seriously interfere with business."

"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president. I'm beginning to believe it."

"Getting married is a good deal like going to a restaurant with your friends. You order what you want and then when you see what the other fellow got you wish you had taken that."

"The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children."

"I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."