I'm curious about your source for those quotes as they seem to be drawn from a single compendium. I'd like to examine it for myself. In the future, please provide proper citations either for the works being referenced or for the source of the quotations. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use the blind, old men as guides. The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments, of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue, are complete skeptics in religion.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
I defend the God of the religionists against the libels of his own believers. Man is certanly stark mad. He cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozen. It should be said that quotations, in and of themselves, prove nothing except what the speaker might think. Their appeal lies in the beauty of the well-turned phrase.