Clarence Darrow Quote

"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 a 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, "Scopes Trial" courtroom speech,
July 13, 1925