Robert G. Ingersoll: Doing (page 3)

Robert G. Ingersoll was Union United States Army officer. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Robert G. Ingersoll: 878   quotes 5   likes

“The theologians depend on assertions. They have no evidence. They claim that their inspired book is superior to reason and independent of evidence. They talk about probability—analogy—inferences—but they present no evidence. They say that they know that Christ lived, in the same way that they know that Cæsar lived. They might add that they know Moses talked with Jehovah on Sinai the same way they know that Brigham Young talked with God in Utah. The evidence in both cases is the same,—none in either. How do they prove that Christ rose from the dead? They find the account in a book. Who wrote the book? They do not know. What evidence is this? None, unless all things found in books are true.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

The Truth (1896)

God , Books , Way , Christ

“If you want to know the opinion of your neighbor, you want his honest opinion. You do not want to be deceived. You do not want to talk with a hypocrite. You want to get straight at his honest mind -- and then you are going to judge him, not by what he says but by what he does.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

“Do away with the miracles, and the superhuman character of Christ is destroyed. He becomes what he really was—a man. Do away with the wonders, and the teachings of Christ cease to be authoritative. They are then worth the reason, the truth that is in them, and nothing more. Do away with the miracles, and then we can measure the utterances of Christ with the standard of our reason. We are no longer intellectual serfs, believing what is unreasonable in obedience to the command of a supposed god.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

Orthodoxy (1884)

God , Truth , Christ

“A minister says to me that I am going to hell—that I am bound to be punished forever and ever—and thereupon I say to him: “There is no hell you are mistaken; your Bible is not inspired; no human being is to suffer agony forever;” and thereupon, with an injured look, he asks me this question: “Why do you hurt my feelings?” It does not occur to him that I have the slightest right to object to his sentence of eternal grief.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Feeling , Hell , Question , Suffering

“Christianity is this: A belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures, the atonement, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, an eternal reward for the believers in Christ, and eternal punishment for the rest of us. Now, take from Christianity its miracles, its absurdities of the atonement and fall of man and the inspiration of the Scriptures, and I have no objection to it as I understand it. I believe, in the main, in the Christianity which I suppose Christ taught, that is, in kindness, gentleness, forgiveness. I do not believe in loving enemies; I have pretty hard work to love my friends.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.

Love , Life , Death , Forgiveness

“It is perfectly easy for any one with the slightest imagination to understand how other people differ from him. I do not attribute a bad motive to a man simply because he disagrees with me.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

People , Imagination , Motivation , Understanding

“The men who declare that woman is the intellectual inferior of man, do not, and cannot, by offering themselves in evidence, substantiate their declaration.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

Preface to Helen Hamilton Gardner, Men, Women and Gods (1885)

Men

“The resurrection. I want to speak about it as we would about any ordinary transaction. In the first place, I do not believe that any miracle was ever performed, and if there was, you cannot prove it. Why? Because it is altogether more reasonable to believe that the people were mistaken about it than that it happened. And why? Because, according to human experience, we know that people will not always tell the truth, and we never saw a miracle ourselves, and we must be governed by our experience; and if we go by our experience, we must say that the miracle never happened—that the witnesses were mistaken.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

Orthodoxy (1884)

People , Truth

“Neither do I say that man is not immortal. Upon that point I admit that I do not know, and the declarations of all the priests in the world upon that subject give me no light, and do not even tend to add to my information on the subject, because I know that they know that they do not know.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.

World , Light

“There is one wonderful thing about the dead people that were raised—we do not hear of them any more. What became of them? If there was a man in this city who had been raised from the dead, I would go to see him to-night. I would say, “Where were you when you got the notice to come back? What kind of a country is it? What kind of opening there for a young man? How did you like it? Did you meet there the friends you had lost? Is there a world without death, without pain, without a tear? Is there a land without a grave, and where good-bye is never heard?””

Robert G. Ingersoll

Orthodoxy (1884)

Death , Pain , People , World

“To me, there is no doctrine so infinitely absurd as the idea that this life is a probationary state—that the few moments spent here decide the fate of a human soul forever. Nothing can be conceived more merciless, more unjust. I am doing all I can to destroy that doctrine. I want, if possible, to get the shadow of hell from the human heart. Why has any life been a failure here? If God is a being of infinite wisdom and kindness, why does he make failures? What excuse has infinite wisdom for peopling the world with savages? Why should one feel grateful to God for having made him with a poor, weak and diseased brain; for having allowed him to be the heir of consumption, of scrofula, or of insanity? Why should one thank God, who lived and died a slave”

Robert G. Ingersoll

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

Life , Wisdom , God , Fate

“If an infinite God created us all, he knew exactly what we would do. If he gave us free will it does not change the result, because he knew how we would use the free will. Now, if he knew that billions upon billions would refuse to take the remedy, and consequently would suffer eternal pain, why create them? There would have been much less misery in the world had he left them dust. What right has a God to make a failure? Why should he change dust into a sentient being, knowing that that being was to be the heir of endless agony?”

Robert G. Ingersoll

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

God , Pain , World , Failure

“I find that people who believe in immortality—or at least those who say they do—are just as afraid of death as anybody else. I find that the most devout Christian weeps as bitterly above his dead, as the man who says that death ends all. You see the promises are so far away, and the dead are so near. Still, I do not say that man is not immortal; but I do say that there is nothing in the Bible to show that he is. The Old Testament has not a word upon the subject—except to show us how we lost immortality.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

Death , People , Dead

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

What Is Religion? (1899) is Ingersoll's last public address, delivered before the American Free Religious association, Boston, June 2, 1899. Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Dresden Memorial Edition Volume IV, pages 477-508, edited by Cliff Walker. http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/ingwhatrel.htm

Life , God , World , Fear

“I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his disciples believed in the existence of devils—talked and made bargains with them, expelled them from people and animals. This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that devils do not exist—that Christ never cast them out, and that if he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane. These stories about devils demonstrate the human, the ignorant origin of the New Testament.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

Why I Am an Agnostic (1896)

People , Truth , Animals , Christ

“Besides, God may have changed his mind on many things; he has on slavery, and polygamy at least, according to the church; and yet his church now wants to go and destroy polygamy in Utah with the sword. Why do they not send missionaries there with copies of the Old Testament?”

Robert G. Ingersoll

Orthodoxy (1884)

God , Change

“I do not rely upon superstition, but upon knowledge; not upon miracles, but upon facts; not upon the dead, but upon the living; and when we become absolutely civilized, we shall look back upon the superstitions of the world, not simply with contempt, but with pity.”

Robert G. Ingersoll

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

World , Dead , Knowledge

“Suppose then, that I do read this Bible honestly, fairly, and when I get through I am compelled to say, “The book is not true.””

Robert G. Ingersoll

If this is the honest result, then you are compelled to say, either that God has made no revelation to me, or that the revelation that it is not true, is the revelation made to me, and by which I am bound. 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.
Some Reasons Why (1881)

Books , Reading