" My 8 Big Ideas https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286624424_My_8_Big_Ideas" (2011), p. 9
“The objection I have to the whipping-post is that it is a punishment which cannot be inflicted by a gentleman. The person who administers the punishment must, of necessity, be fully as degraded as the person who receives it.”
Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Robert G. Ingersoll 439
Union United States Army officer 1833–1899Related quotes
“Every person who is tempted to go astray, does not deserve punishment.”
Nahj al-Balagha

"The Moral Problem"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

“All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.”
"Fifth Dialogue," p. 149
St. Petersburg Dialogues (1821)

Upon being forced to leave a train car due to his color, as quoted in Up from Slavery (1901), Ch. VI: "Black Race And Red Race, the penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of strange questions", by Booker T. Washington

The Plague (1947)
Context: There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.