Matthew Harrison Brady: I am more interested in the 'Rock of Ages' than I am in the age of rocks.

Matthew Harrison Brady: I do not think about things I do not think about.
Henry Drummond: Do you ever think about things that you do think about?

Matthew Harrison Brady: I have been to their cities and I have seen the altars upon which they sacrifice the futures of their children to the gods of science. And what are their rewards? Confusion and self-destruction. New ways to kill each other in wars. I tell you gentlemen the way of science is the way of darkness.

Matthew Harrison Brady: Remember the wisdom of Solomon in the book of Proverbs. "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."

Matthew Harrison Brady: There is only one great truth in the world!

Matthew Harrison Brady: We must not abandon faith! Faith is the most important thing!
Henry Drummond: Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one thing that sets above the other animals? What other merit have we? The elephant is larger, the horse stronger and swifter, the butterfly more beautiful, the mosquito more prolific, even the sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?
Matthew Harrison Brady: I don't know. I'm a man, not a sponge!
Henry Drummond: Do you think a sponge thinks?
Matthew Harrison Brady: If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks!
Henry Drummond: Does a man have the same privilege as a sponge?
Matthew Harrison Brady: Of course!
Henry Drummond: [Gesturing towards the defendant, Bertram Cates] Then this man wishes to have the same privilege of a sponge, he wishes to think!

Matthew Harrison Brady: Why is it, my old friend, that you've moved so far away from me?
Henry Drummond: All motion is relative, Matt. Maybe it's you who've moved away by standing still.

Sarah Brady: Youth can be so pure. What do you know of good or evil? What do you understand of the sum of a man's life?
Rachel Brown: He betrayed me!
Sarah Brady: You betrayed yourself! You see my husband as a saint, and so he must be right in everything he says and does. And then you see him as a devil, and everything he says and does must be wrong. Well my husband's neither a saint nor a devil. He's just a human being, and he makes mistakes.
Rachel Brown: How can you defend him?
Sarah Brady: It's not he I'm defending! I'm defending the forty years I've lived with this man, and watched him carry the burdens of people like you! If he's been wrong, at least he stood for something! What do you stand for? Do you believe in Bertram Cates? I believe in my husband. What do you believe in?

Rachel Brown: [addressing the court about the Stebbeins boy] He went swimming in the river with the other boys, he got a cramp and drowned. At the funeral, my father said that Tommy's soul couldn't pass on to Heaven.
Bertram T. Cates: Tell them what your father really said, that Tommy's soul was damned and burning in hellfire! Religion is supposed to comfort people, not scare them to death!

Rachel Brown: Don't you see? Bert didn't think it was fair that a little child couldn't go to Heaven.