“It is only when we discard the idea of a deity, the idea of cruelty or goodness in nature, that we are able ever to bear with patience the ills of life.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is only when we discard the idea of a deity, the idea of cruelty or goodness in nature, that we are able ever to bea…" by Robert G. Ingersoll?

Robert G. Ingersoll 439

Union United States Army officer 1833–1899

Related quotes

“Now, where did we ever get the idea that there is such a thing as 'good government?'”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

That is a contradiction in terms as ridiculous as 'constructive rape.'

p. 14
Good Government: Hope or Illusion? (1978)

“.. by getting as close to the true idea of religion, of spirituality as it is possible for us to get.... we would be in possession of the only tangible relationship tot the deity in things.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter from Paris to Rockwell Kent, August 22, 1912, Archives of American Art; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 44
1908 - 1920

“We are all ill; but even a universal sickness implies an idea of health.”

Lionel Trilling book The Liberal Imagination

Art and Neurosis
The Liberal Imagination (1950)

“It wouldn’t take much – one big scientific idea, or artistic idea, one good book, one good painting – who knows – we are at a critical point where the ideas are coming thicker and faster and stranger and stranger than they ever were before.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: To me, when we talk about the world, we are talking about our ideas of the world. Our ideas of organisation, our different religions, our different economic systems, our ideas about it are the world. We are heading for a radical revision where you could say we are heading towards the end of the world, but more in the R. E. M. sense than the Revelation sense. That is what apocalypse means – revelation. I could square that with the end of the world, a revelation, a new way of looking at things, something that completely radicalises our notions of the where we were, when we were, what we were, something like that would constitute an end to the world in the kind of abstract – yet very real sense – that I am talking about. A change in the language, a change in the thinking, a change in the music. It wouldn’t take much – one big scientific idea, or artistic idea, one good book, one good painting – who knows – we are at a critical point where the ideas are coming thicker and faster and stranger and stranger than they ever were before. They are realised at a greater speed, everything has become very fluid.