Top 35 Luther Burbank Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The greatest happiness in the world is to make others happy.”

— Luther Burbank

2. “Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.”

— Luther Burbank

3. “The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love.”

— Luther Burbank

4. “Justice, love, truth, peace and harmony, a serene unity with science and the laws of the universe.”

— Luther Burbank

5. “A flower is an educated weed.”

— Luther Burbank

6. “I am an infidel. I know what an infidel is, and that’s what I am.”

— Luther Burbank

7. “Men should stop fighting among themselves and start fighting insects.”

— Luther Burbank

8. “Heredity is nothing but stored environment.”

— Luther Burbank

9. “The time has come for honest men to denounce false teachers and attack false gods.”

— Luther Burbank

10. “I firmly believe, from what I have seen, that this is the chosen spot of all this earth as far as nature is concerned.”

— Luther Burbank

11. “The clear light of science teaches us that we must be our own saviors, if we are to be found worth saving.”

— Luther Burbank

12. “The idea that a good God would send people to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me – the raving of insanity, superstition gone to seed! I want no part of such a God.”

— Luther Burbank

13. “Plants are as responsive to thought as children.”

— Luther Burbank

14. “Heredity: the traits that a disobedient child gets from the other parent.”

— Luther Burbank

15. “Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity.”

— Luther Burbank

16. “It is well for people who think, to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean.”

— Luther Burbank

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

— Luther Burbank

18. “Science is the only savior.”

— Luther Burbank

19. “Science, which is only another name for truth, now holds religious charlatans, self-deceivers and God agents in a certain degree of check – agents and employees, I mean, of a mythical, medieval, man-made God, anthropomorphic in constitution.”

— Luther Burbank

20. “Obsolete misleading theologies bear the same relation to the essence of true religion that scarlet fever, mumps, and measles do to education.”

— Luther Burbank

21. “Children are the greatest sufferers from outgrown theologies.”

— Luther Burbank

22. “For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.”

— Luther Burbank

23. “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

24. “Bryan – a great friend of mine, by the way – had a Neanderthal type of head, Burbank says. As to Riley, he has not even the oratorical skill of Bryan. The whole movement is based on the poor whites of the south.”

— Luther Burbank

25. “Most people’s religion is what they want to believe, not what they do believe.”

— Luther Burbank

26. “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

27. “All my work has come about through a change in my earlier opinion of religion.”

— Luther Burbank

28. “However, when it can be proved to me that there is immortality, that there is resurrection beyond the gates of death, then will I believe. Until then, no.”

— Luther Burbank

29. “The scientist is a lover of truth for the very love of truth itself, wherever it may lead.”

— Luther Burbank

30. “Our lives as we lead them as passed on to others, whether in physical or mental forms, tingeing all future lives together. This should be enough for one who lives for truth and service to his fellow passengers on the way.”

— Luther Burbank

31. “Prayer may be elevating if combined with work, and they who labor with head, hands or feet have faith and are generally quite sure of an immediate and favorable reply.”

— Luther Burbank

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

— Luther Burbank

33. “I have learned from Nature that dependence on unnatural beliefs weakens us in the struggle and shortens our breath for the race.”

— Luther Burbank

34. “What is the use of assuring Fundamentalists that science is compatible with religion. They retort at once, Certainly not with our religion.”

— Luther Burbank

35. “Of course it must, and our scientific men must be criticized boldly. They will not feel comfortable when you and I are through with them.”

— Luther Burbank

36. “As a scientist I cannot help feeling that all religions are on a tottering foundation. None is perfect or inspired. As for their prophets, there are as many today as ever before, only now science refuses to let them overstep the bounds of common sense.”

— Luther Burbank