“They were all, according to my belief, devised by men, and all have for a foundation ignorance of this world and fear of the next.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)
Context: I have no Protestant prejudices against Catholicism, and have no Catholic prejudices against Protestantism. I regard all religions either without prejudice or with the same prejudice. They were all, according to my belief, devised by men, and all have for a foundation ignorance of this world and fear of the next. All the Gods have been made by men. They are all equally powerful and equally useless.

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Robert G. Ingersoll 439

Union United States Army officer 1833–1899

John Cleland book Fanny Hill

Page 40
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

“Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, research is the means of all learning, and ignorance is the end.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

“Men build all kinds of worlds in order to defeat fear and loneliness.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 502

“The speculators deadly enemies are: Ignorance, greed, fear and hope. All the statute books in the world and all the rules of all the Exchanges on earth cannot eliminate these from the human animal.”

Edwin Lefèvre book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Chapter XXIII, p. 278

“They have told ghost stories to courage until courage became fear. They have done all in their power to keep men from growing intellectually, to keep the world in a state of childhood, that they themselves might be deemed great and good and wise. They have always known that their reputation for wisdom depended upon the ignorance of the people.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)
Context: The inventor of paper—and he was not a Christian—did more than all the early fathers for mankind. The inventors of plows, of sickles, of cradles, of reapers; the inventors of wagons, coaches, locomotives; the inventors of skiffs, sail-vessels, steamships; the men who have made looms—in short, the inventors of all useful things—they are the civilizers taken in connection with the great thinkers, the poets, the musicians, the actors, the painters, the sculptors. The men who have invented the useful, and the men who have made the useful beautiful, are the real civilizers of mankind. The priests, in all ages, have been hindrances—stumbling-blocks. They have prevented man from using his reason. They have told ghost stories to courage until courage became fear. They have done all in their power to keep men from growing intellectually, to keep the world in a state of childhood, that they themselves might be deemed great and good and wise. They have always known that their reputation for wisdom depended upon the ignorance of the people.

“Your thoughts and beliefs of the past have created this moment, and all the moments up to this moment. What you are now choosing to believe and think and say will create the next moment and the next day and the next month and the next year.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

“Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Iowa Caucus Victory Speech, Delivered at the Iowa Democratic caucus on 3 January 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNZaq-YKCnE
2008

“The betrayal of a belief is not the same thing as ceasing to believe. If this were not so there would be no moral standards in the world at all.”

James Baldwin book Notes of a Native Son

Stranger in the Village http://harpers.org/archive/1953/10/stranger-in-the-village/ Harper's Magazine (October 1953); republished in Notes of a Native Son http://books.google.com/books?id=B0N2AAAAMAAJ&q=%22The+betrayal+of+a+belief+is+not+the+same+thing+as+ceasing+to+believe+If+this+were+not+so+there+would+be+no+moral+standards+in+the+world+at+all%22&pg=PA171#v=onepage (1955)

“The repetition of the days have taught me to fear nothing in life except the fear of my own ignorance.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“All men are my children. What I desire for my own children, and I desire their welfare and happiness both in this world and the next, that I desire for all men. You do not understand to what extent I desire this, and if some of you do understand, you do not understand the full extent of my desire.”

Ashoka (-304–-232 BC) Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty

Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)

“They were all, according to my belief, devised by men, and all have for a foundation ignorance of this world and fear of the next.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll 439

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