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.

— Clarence Darrow

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.

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Clarence Darrow

I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.

— Clarence Darrow

If every man who passed an unjust judgment on his fellow should be condemned, how many judges would be found so vain and foolish as to review and condemn their Maker’s work?

— Clarence Darrow

If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men. If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After while, your honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Clarence Darrow

Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more.

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Clarence Darrow

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

— Clarence Darrow