Quote

We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Robert Green Ingersoll
Age: 65 †
Born: 1833
Born: August 11
Died: 1899
Died: July 21
Essayist
Lawyer
Lecturer
Orator
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Dresden
Yates County
New York
Robert Ingersoll
The Great Agnostic
Horizon
Ignorant
Asked
Beyond
Honest
Known
Must

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

Image
Sacred are the lips from which has issued only truth.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes - more important than gold or houses or lands - more important than art or science - more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
The closer I'm bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey. I believe it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts... I despise it, I defy it, and I hate it.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
If all the historic books of the Bible were blotted from the memory of mankind, nothing of value would be lost.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
It is with men as with other things. The mullein needs only a year, but the oak a century, and the greatest men are those who have continued to grow as long as they have lived.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
If the world ever advances beyond what it is today, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
Just to the extent that the Bible was appealed to in matters of science, science was retarded and just to the extent that science has been appealed to in matters of religion, religion has advanced - so that now the object of intelligent religionists is to adopt a creed that will bear the test and criticism of science.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God what we know is science.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil pray for those that despitefully use you love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
If the Bible is true, it needs no inspiration, and - if not true, inspiration can do it no good.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
On every hand there seems to be design to defeat design. If God created man - if he is the father of us all, why did he make the criminals, the insane, the deformed and idiotic? Should the mother, who clasps to her breast an idiot child, thank God?
Robert Green Ingersoll
Image
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
Robert Green Ingersoll