“As a scientist, I cannot help feeling that all religions are a tottering foundation. I am an infidel today. I do not believe that what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic. When it can be proved to me that there is immorality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no.”

— Luther Burbank (1926), San Francisco Bulletin (pg. 1), Jan 22

“The idea that a good god would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me—the ravings of insanity, superstition gone to seed! I don’t want to have any thing to do with such a god.”

— Luther Burbank (1926), “Address to First Congregational Church”, San Francisco, Jan 31

“Euripides long ago said, ‘who dares not speak his free thought is a slave’. I nominate myself as an ‘infidel’ as a challenge to thought for those who are asleep.”

— Luther Burbank (1926), “Address to First Congregational Church”, San Francisco, Jan 31

“It is impossible to estimate the wealth he has created. It has been generously given to the world. Unlike inventors, in other fields, no patent rights were given him, nor did he seek a monopoly in what he created. Had that been the case, Luther Burbank would have been perhaps the world's richest man. But the world is richer because of him. In this he found joy that no amount of money could give.

And so we meet him here today, not in death, but in the only immortal life we positively know--his good deeds, his kindly, simple, life of constructive work and loving service to the whole wide world.

These things cannot die. They are cumulative, and the work he has done shall be as nothing to its continuation in the only immortality this brave, unselfish man ever sought, or asked to know.

As great as were his contributions to the material wealth of this planet, the ages yet to come, that shall better understand him, will give first place in judging the importance of his work to what he has done for the betterment of human plants and the strength they shall gain, through his courage, to conquer the tares, the thistles and the weeds. Then no more shall we have a mythical god that smells of brimstone and fire; that confuses hate with love; a god that binds up the minds of little children, as other heathens bind up their feet—little children equally helpless to defend their precious right to think and choose and not be chained from the dawn of childhood to the dogmas of the dead.

Luther Burbank will rank with the great leaders who have driven heathenish gods back into darkness, forever from this earth.

In the orthodox threat of eternal punishment for sin--which he knew was often synonymous with yielding up all liberty and freedom--and in its promise of an immortality, often held out for the sacrifice of all that was dear to life, the right to think, the right to one's mind, the right to choose, he saw nothing but cowardice. He shrank from such ways of thought as a flower from the icy blasts of death. As shown by his work in life, contributing billions of wealth to humanity, with no more return than the maintenance of his own breadline, he was too humble, too unselfish, to be cajoled with dogmatic promises of rewards as a sort of heavenly bribe for righteous conduct here. He knew that the man who fearlessly stands for the right, regardless of the threat of punishment or the promise of reward, was the real man.

Rather was he willing to accept eternal sleep, in returning to the elements from whence he came, for in his lexicon change was life. Here he was content to mingle as a part of the whole, as the raindrop from the sea performs its sacred service in watering the land to which it is assigned, that two blades may grow instead of one, and then, its mission ended, goes back to the ocean from whence it came. With such service, with such a life as gardener to the lilies of the field, in his return to the bosoms of infinity, he has not lost himself. There he has found himself, is a part of the cosmic sea of eternal force, eternal energy. And thus, he lived and always will live.

Thomas Edison, who believes very much as Burbank, once discussed with me immortality. He pointed to the electric light, his invention, saying: ‘There lives Tom Edison.’ So Luther Burbank lives. He lives forever in the myriad fields of strengthened grain, in the new forms of fruits and flowers, plants, vines, and trees, and above all, the newly watered gardens of the human mind, from whence shall spring human freedom that shall drive out false and brutal gods. The gods are toppling from their thrones. They go before the laughter and the joy of the new childhood of the race, unshackled and unafraid”

“Mr. Bryan was an honored friend of mine, yet this need not prevent the observation that the skull with which nature endowed him visibly approached the Neanderthal type. Those who would legislate against the teaching of evolution should also legislate against gravity, electricity and the unreasonable velocity of light, and also should introduce a clause to prevent the use of the telescope, the microscope and the spectroscope, or any other instrument of precision which may in the future be invented, constructed or used for the discovery of truth.”

— Luther Burbank (1926), Publication; in: Science and Civilization [1]

“The word ‘religion’ has acquired a very bad name among those who really love truth, justice, charity. It also exhales the musty odor of sanctimony and falsehood.”

— Luther Burbank (1926), “Summary of Beliefs” [3]

“Scientists gladly accept any new truth which can be demonstrated by experiment, that is, proved by the very law of the cosmos. Not so with any new conceptions of religion; these are fought by the use of persecution and venom. Many of the cur-rent religious beliefs literally carried into practice would stampede humanity into the old jungle ideas and habits.”

— Luther Burbank (1926), “Summary of Beliefs” [3]

“The integrity of one's own mind is of infinitely more value than adherence to any creed or system. We must choose between a dead faith belonging to the past and a living, growing, ever-advancing science belonging to the future.”

— Luther Burbank (1926), “Summary of Beliefs” [3]

“Those who take refuge behind theological barbed wire fences, quite often whish they could have more freedom of thought, but fear the change to the great ocean of scientific truth as they would a cold bath plunge.”

— Luther Burbank (1926), Why I Am Infidel [2]

“Do not feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion; give them nature.”

— Luther Burbank (1926) [2]