Courage without conscience is a wild beast. Robert Green Ingersoll More Quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll More Quotes From Robert Green Ingersoll The only thing that makes life endurable in this world is human love, and yet, according to Christianity, that is the very thing that we are not to have in the other world. We are to be so taken up with Jesus and angels, that we shall care nothing about our brothers and sisters that have been damned. We shall be so carried away with the music of the harp that we shall not even hear the wail of father and mother. Such a religion is a disgrace to human nature. Robert Green Ingersoll brothermotherjesus One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be. Robert Green Ingersoll denialfactsreligion We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him. Robert Green Ingersoll brothermotherfather Intellectual liberty [is] the right to think right and the right to think wrong. Thought is the means by which we endeavor to arrive at truth. Robert Green Ingersoll intellectualmeanthinking To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds. Robert Green Ingersoll hateworshipmen You see, after all, few rich men own their property. The property owns them. Robert Green Ingersoll vaccinesrichmen Had he been willing to live a hypocrite, he would have been respectable, he at least could have died surrounded by other hypocrites, and at his death there would have been an imposing funeral, with miles of carriages, filled with hypocrites, and above his hypocritical dust there would have been a hypocritical monument covered with lies. Robert Green Ingersoll dusthypocritelying We must remember that there is a great difference between a myth and a miracle. A myth is the idealization of a fact. A miracle is the counterfeit of a fact. There is the same difference between a myth and a miracle that there is between fiction and falsehood -- between poetry and perjury. Miracles belong to the far past and the far future. The little line of sand, called the present, between the seas, belongs to common sense to the natural. Robert Green Ingersoll differencesseapast Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many respects, the grandest man ever President of the United States. Upon his monument these words should be written: "Here sleeps the only man in the history of the world who, having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it, except upon the side of mercy." Robert Green Ingersoll presidentsleepmen To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Robert Green Ingersoll individualitygiving-upgiving If Jehovah cannot support his religion without going into partnership with a State Legislature, I think he ought to give it up. Robert Green Ingersoll supportgivingthinking I want it so that every minister will be not a parrot, not an owl sitting upon a dead limb of the tree of knowledge and hooting the hoots that have been hooted for eighteen hundred years. But I want it so that each one can be an investigator, a thinker; and I want to make his congregation grand enough so that they will not only allow him to think, but will demand that he shall think, and give to them the honest truth of his thought. Robert Green Ingersoll givingyearsthinking You cannot show real respect to your parents by perpetuating their errors.... Do you consider that the inventor of a steel plow cast a slur upon his father who scratched the ground with a wooden one? I do not consider that an invention by the son is a slander upon the father; I regard each invention simply as an improvement; and every father should be exceedingly proud of an ingenious son. If Mr. Talmage has a son, it will be impossible for him to honor his father except by differing with him. Robert Green Ingersoll realfatherson Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice. Robert Green Ingersoll epithetargumentlogic Every cradle asks us, Whence? and every coffin, Whither? The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed. Robert Green Ingersoll barbarianscoffinsanswers Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other impoverishes; the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed. Robert Green Ingersoll truth-isthriveenemy Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning. Robert Green Ingersoll certificatesdifferentmen No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me. Robert Green Ingersoll opinionbeliefway In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder. Robert Green Ingersoll dustliarssleep Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers... every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child - every solitary one was a Democrat. Robert Green Ingersoll motherwarchildren
