Robert G. Ingersoll quotes - page 14

In the old times of which I have spoken, they desired to make all men think exactly alike. All the mechanical ingenuity of the world cannot make two clocks run exactly alike, and how are you going to make hundreds of millions of people, differing in brain and disposition, in education and aspiration, in conditions and surroundings, each clad in a living robe of passionate flesh - how are you going to make them think and feel alike? (Robert G. Ingersoll)
While the church believes in witchcraft, it is in a greatly modified form. The evil spirits are not as plenty as in former times, and more phenomena are accounted for by natural means. Just to the extent that belief has been lost in spirits, just to that extent the church has lost its power and authority. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Every church pretends that it has a revelation from God, and that this revelation must be given to the people through the church; that the church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with a revelation - not from God - but from the church. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
This would have happened even if the intention had been to get all bad men, for the reason that man reaches perfection neither in good nor in evil. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The people became convinced-being ignorant, stupid and credulous-that the church held the keys of heaven and hell. The foundation for the most terrible mental tyranny that has existed among men was in this way laid. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Nothing is said in the Testament about the families of the apostles; nothing of family life, of the sacredness of home; nothing about the necessity of education, the improvement and development of the mind. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Reason, Observation and Experience - the Holy Trinity of Science - have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The church has become a club. It is a social affair, and the rich do not care to associate in the week days with the poor they may happen to meet at church. As they expect to be in heaven together forever, they can afford to be separated here. There will certainly be time enough there to get acquainted. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The Catholic Church enslaved to the extent of its power. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The king said that mankind must not work for themselves. The priest said that mankind must not think for themselves. One forged chains for the hands, the other for the soul. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought. Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
It taught that the insane were inhabited by devils. Insanity was not a disease. It was produced by demons. It could be cured by prayers. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
A few years ago they would have burned me at the stake and I should have been compelled to look upon their hypocritical faces through flame and smoke. They cannot do it now or they would. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful. Upon that rock I stand. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
No man can blaspheme a book. No man can commit blasphemy by telling his honest thought. No man can blaspheme a God, or a Holy Ghost, or a Son of God. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The great question is not, who died right, but who lived right? There is infinitely more responsibility in living than in dying. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
We should be kind to each other whether Lazarus was raised or not. We should be just and forgiving whether Christ lived or not. All the miracles in the world are of no use to virtue, morality, or justice. Miracles belong to superstition, to ignorance, to fear and folly. Neither does it make any difference who wrote the Gospels. They are worth the truth that is in them and no more. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
A man has a right to work with his hands, to plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who take these rights from their fellow-men. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler hardens, debases, and pollutes even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the universe, no good being can be perfectly happy. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
But they say he "permits” it. What for? So that we may have freedom of choice. What for? So that God may find, I suppose, who are good and who are bad. Did he not know that when he made us? Did he not know exactly just what he was making? View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Instead of healing a withered arm, why did he not find some man whose arm had been cut off, and make another grow? View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Men and women have been burned for thinking there is but one God; that there was none. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
He did not say to either Matthew, Mark, or Luke, or to any one in their hearing, that he was the Son of God, or that he was miraculously conceived. He did not say it. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll