Chase after the truth like all hell, and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.

— Clarence Darrow

Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laugh gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man.

— Clarence Darrow

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 someone they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed anyone, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.

— Clarence Darrow

[George Everett Macdonald was] a valiant soldier for human liberty.

— Clarence Darrow

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.

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Clarence Darrow

History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.

— Clarence Darrow

I am an Agnostic because I am not afraid to think. 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.

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Clarence Darrow