Robert G. Ingersoll quotes - page 18

What is blasphemy in one country would be a religious exhortation in another. It is owing to where you are and who is in authority. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
At that time the church had great power; it could retaliate; it could destroy. The church abandoned the stake only when too many men objected to being burned. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Any man who believes that such hideous laws were made by an infinitely wise and benevolent God is, in my judgment, insane or totally depraved. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
I want to say right here - many a man has cursed the God of another man. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
I do not say, and I do not believe, that Christians are as bad as their creeds. In spite of church and dogma, there have been millions and millions of men and women true to the loftiest and most generous promptings of the human heart. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
These religions teach the slave virtues. They make inanimate things holy, and falsehoods sacred. They create artificial crimes. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Day by day, religious conceptions grow less and less intense. Day by day, the old spirit dies out of book and creed. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
These heroes are dead. They died for liberty - they died for us. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The agnostic does not simply say, "I do not know.” He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. He insists that you are trading on the ignorance of others, and on the fear of others. He is not satisfied with saying that you do not know,-he demonstrates that you do not know. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
Why should man be afraid to think, and why should he fear to express his thoughts? (Robert G. Ingersoll)
It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite of malice, hatred, and revenge. Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for the dead. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
And yet, here you have a work upholding slavery, and you say that it was written by an infinitely good God! View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
They belittled this world and exaggerated the importance of the next. They consoled the slave by telling him that in a little while he would exchange his chains for wings. They comforted the captive by saying that in a few days he would leave his dungeon for the bowers of Paradise. His followers believed that he had said that "Whosoever believeth not shall be damned.” This passage was the cross upon which intellectual liberty was crucified. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The people who had the Bible were defeated by the people who had not. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The "Black Death” was sent by the eternal Father, whose mercy spared some and whose justice murdered the rest. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
He is compelled to insist that Jehovah is as bad now as he was then; that he is as good now as he was then. Once, all the crimes that I have mentioned were commanded by God; now they are prohibited. Once, God was in favor of them all; now the Devil is their defender. In other words, the Devil entertains the same opinion to-day that God held four thousand years ago. The Devil is as good now as Jehovah was then, and God was as bad then as the Devil is now. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The barbarian is egotistic enough to suppose that an Infinite Being is constantly doing something, or failing to do something, on his account. But as man rises in the scale of civilization, as he becomes really great, he comes to the conclusion that nothing in Nature happens on his account-that he is hardly great enough to disturb the motions of the planets. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
That the hearers will get more doubts from the answer than from reading the original arguments. So the Rev. Dr. Hawkins admits that he cannot defend Christianity from infidel attacks without creating more infidelity. (Robert G. Ingersoll)
All "inspired books,” teaching that what the supernatural commands is right, and right because commanded, and that what the supernatural prohibits is wrong, and wrong because prohibited, are absurdly unphilosophic. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
The idea of hell was born of ignorance, brutality, fear, cowardice, and revenge. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
There are many good precepts, many wise sayings and many good regulations and laws in the Bible, and these are mingled with bad precepts, with foolish sayings, with absurd rules and cruel laws. But we must remember that the Bible is a collection of many books written centuries apart, and that it in part represents the growth and tells in part the history of a people. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll
These things are the foes of morality. They subvert all natural conceptions of virtue. View quote
Robert G. Ingersoll