“Priests, theologians, have taken advantage of women—of their gentleness—their love of approbation. They have lived upon their hopes and fears. Like vampires, they have sucked their blood. They have made them responsible for the sins of the world. They have taught them the slave virtues—meekness, humility—implicit obedience. They have fed their minds with mistakes, mysteries and absurdities. They have endeavored to weaken and shrivel their brains, until, to them, there would be no possible connection between evidence and belief—between fact and faith.”
A Thanksgiving Sermon (1897)
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Robert G. Ingersoll 439
Union United States Army officer 1833–1899Related quotes
“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
Source: The Book Thief
“If punishment followed instantly upon sin, men would act justly from fear and have no virtue.”
XIX. Why sinners are not punished at once.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: It is not only spirits who punish the evil, the soul brings itself to judgment: and also it is not right for those who endure for ever to attain everything in a short time: and also, there is need of human virtue. If punishment followed instantly upon sin, men would act justly from fear and have no virtue.
“I must have women—there is nothing unbends the mind like them.”
Macheath, Act II, sc. iii
The Beggar's Opera (1728)
2000s, 2007, Address to the Nation (January 2007)
Judy McAden, Chapter 26, p. 314
Source: 2000s, The Rescue (2000)
XXI. That the Good are happy, both living and dead.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those who have set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it.
