Quotes from Clarence Darrow

Someday I hope to write a book where the royalties will pay for the copies I give away.

Those who enjoy the emotion of hating are much like the groups who sate their thirst for blood by hunting and hounding to death helpless animals as an outlet for their emotions.

Autobiography is never entirely true. No one can get the right perspective on himself. Every fact is colored by imagination and dream.

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.

You can only be free if I am free.

Different strokes for different folks.

I am not afraid of any god in the universe who would send me or any other man or woman to hell. If there were such a being, he would not be a god; he would be a devil.

In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality.

Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either.

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

I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure - that is all that agnosticism means.

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

You can't get to a pleasant place to be at unless you use pleasant methods to get there. When you are dealing with a human society the means is fully as important as the end.

The purpose of life is to live it.

The origin of the absurd idea of immortal life is easy to discover; it is kept alive by hope and fear, by childish faith, and by cowardice.

We're all killers at heart . . . . I have never taken anybody's life, but I have often read obituary notices with considerable satisfaction.

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

Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they serve.

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

Depressions may bring people closer to the church but so do funerals.

To think is to differ.

In life one cannot eat his cake and have it, too; he must make his choice and then do the best he can to be content to go the way his judgment leads.

None meet life honestly and few heroically.