Parenting & Family Quote by Clarence Darrow

Darrow doesn’t argue; he prosecutes. Calling immortality an "absurd idea" is less a metaphysical claim than a courtroom tactic: he’s trying to strip the belief of its dignity so the jury of public opinion feels embarrassed to keep it. The phrase "easy to discover" signals his confidence that religion’s most consoling promise isn’t a revelation but a psychological artifact. He’s doing what a great trial lawyer does: offering motive.

The motive list is pointedly unflattering. "Hope and fear" are the two levers that sell almost anything, and Darrow frames immortality as the most lucrative product ever marketed to anxious humans. Then he tightens the screws with "childish faith" and "cowardice" - not just mistaken, but immature; not just wrong, but morally evasive. The subtext is Darwinian and modern: belief persists not because it’s true, but because it’s useful. Immortality becomes a coping mechanism, a way to outsource grief and soften accountability, a promise that pain won’t be final and justice won’t be missed.

Context matters: Darrow made his name fighting moral certainty in public spectacle - from labor battles to the Scopes trial - where fundamentalism often served as social control dressed up as salvation. This line is pitched at an America negotiating modern science, industrial brutality, and mass persuasion. He’s not offering comfort; he’s trying to make comfort suspicious, insisting that adulthood means facing finitude without bribing yourself with eternity.