Robert G. Ingersoll quotes - page 16

Paul quotes none of the miracles of the New Testament. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
If the book and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and the brain do not agree? Either God should have written a book to fit my brain, or should have made my brain to fit his book. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
It costs too much to worship God in public. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
They did not labor for others. They were beggars-parasites-vermin. They were insane. They followed the teachings of Christ. They took no thought for the morrow. They mutilated their bodies-scarred their flesh and destroyed their minds for the sake of happiness in another world. During the journey of life they kept their eyes on the grave. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
In my judgment, they were right. To give up witchcraft is to give up, in a great degree at least, the supernatural. To throw away the little ghosts simply prepares the mind of man to give up the great ones. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
No man, standing where the horizon of a life has touched a grave, has any right to prophesy a future filled with pain and tears. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Every one is liable to be mistaken. The horizon of each individual is very narrow, and in his poor sky the stars are few and very small. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
They were all, according to my belief, devised by men, and all have for a foundation ignorance of this world and fear of the next. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
I would defend the freedom of speech. And why? Because no attack can be answered by force, no argument can be refuted by a blow, or by imprisonment, or by fine. You may imprison the man, but the argument is free; you may fell the man to the earth, but the statement stands. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Imagination gathers from every field of thought and pours the wealth of many lives into the lap of one. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
The disciples of fear cannot touch me. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Nobody appeals to a passage to settle a dispute of fact. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
I do not say that this is true in every case, but I do say that if priests had not been fond of mutton, lambs never would have been sacrificed to God. Nothing was ever carried to the temple that the priest could not use, and it always so happened that God wanted what his agents liked. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
In short, every virtue has been a crime, and every crime a virtue. The church has burned honesty and rewarded hypocrisy. And all this, because it was commanded by a book - a book that men had been taught implicitly to believe, long before they knew one word that was in it. They had been taught that to doubt the truth of this book - to examine it, even - was a crime of such enormity that it could not be forgiven, either in this world or in the next. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Can any farmer, mechanic, or scientist find in the New Testament one useful fact? View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
In 1616 the system of Copernicus was condemned by the pope, by the infallible Catholic Church, and the church was about as near right upon that subject as upon any other. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Nature never prompted a loving mother to throw her child into the Ganges. Nature never prompted men to exterminate each other for a difference of opinion concerning the baptism of infants. These crimes have been produced by religions filled with all that is illogical, cruel and hideous. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, - never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
If we wish to be true to ourselves, - if we wish to benefit our fellow-men - if we wish to live honorable lives - we will give to every other human being every right that we claim for ourselves. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not "fall.”. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
The grandest of all things is to be in the highest and noblest sense a man. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Gentlemen, you can never make me believe - no statute can ever convince me, that there is any infinite Being in this universe who hates an honest man. It is impossible to satisfy me that there is any God, or can be any God, who holds in abhorrence a soul that has the courage to express his thought. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Why did he not watch the devil, instead of watching Adam and Eve? Instead of turning them out, why did he not keep him from getting in? Why did he not have his flood first, and drown the devil, before he made a man and woman. And yet, people who call themselves intelligent-professors in colleges and presidents of venerable institutions-teach children and young men that the Garden of Eden story is an absolute historical fact. I defy any man to think of a more childish thing. This God, waiting around Eden-knowing all the while what would happen-having made them on purpose so that it would happen, then does what? Holds all of us responsible, and we were not there. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
By force you can make hypocrites -- men who will agree with you from the teeth out, and in their hearts hate you. We want no more hypocrites. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll