Quotes Robert Green Ingersoll - page 3
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The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called faith.
According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to himself and the other two.
It is like most other ancient books - a mingling of falsehood and truth, of philosophy and folly - all written by men, and most of the men only partially civilized. Some of its laws are good - some infinitely barbarous. None of the miracles related were performed. . . . Take out the absurdities, the miracles, all that pertains to the supernatural - all the cruel and barbaric laws - and to the remainder I have no objection. Neither would I have for it any great admiration.
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Certainly the Old Testament does not teach us that there is another life, and upon that question even the New is obscure and vague. The hunger of the heart finds only a few small and scattered crumbs. There is nothing definite, solid, and satisfying. United with the idea of immortality we find the absurdity of the resurrection. A prophecy that depends for its fulfillment upon an impossibility, cannot satisfy the brain or heart.
Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.
Epithets are not arguments. Abuse does not persuade.
If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected, and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.
If the reason I give is a good one, you will act upon it. If it is a bad one I cannot make it better by piling epithet upon epithet. There is no logic in abuse; there is no argument in an epithet.
The falling leaf that tells of autumn's death is, in a subtler sense, a prophecy of spring.
There is something tenderly appropriate in the serene death of the old. Nothing is more touching than the death of the young, the strong.
In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob.
I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart-the best brain.
When struck on one cheek to turn the other, is really joining a conspiracy to secure the triumph of brutality. To agree not to resist evil is to become an accomplice of all injustice.
To avoid pain we must know the conditions of health. For the accomplishment of this end we must rely upon investigation instead of faith, upon labor in place of prayer. Most misery is produced by ignorance. Passions sow the seeds of pain.
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I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
