Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The few have said, Think! The many have said, Believe! The first doubt was the womb and cradle of progress, and from the first doubt, man has continued to advance.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Doubt
Firsts
First
Many
Cradle
Believe
Womb
Men
Continued
Think
Advance
Thinking
Progress
More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll
Insolence is not logic epithets are the arguments of malice.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The man who finds a truth lights a torch.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, Halt! A creed is the ignorant Past bulling the enlightened Present.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Intellect, without heart, is infinitely cruel. . . . So that, after all, the real aristocracy must be that of goodness where the intellect is directed by the heart.
Robert Green Ingersoll
This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Talent has the four seasons: spring, that is to say, the sowing of the seeds summer, growth autumn, the harvest winter, intellectual death. But there is now and then a genius who has no winter, and, no matter how many years he may live, on the blossom of his thought no snow falls. Genius has the climate of perpetual growth.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The man who invented the telescope found out more about heaven than the closed eyes of prayer ever discovered.
Robert Green Ingersoll
We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living-Hope for the dead.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Do not trust those in whom the compulsion to punish is strong.
Robert Green Ingersoll
As a matter of fact, no one knows that God exists and no one knows that God does not exist. To my mind there is no evidence that God exists - that this world is governed by a being of infinite goodness, wisdom and power, but I do not pretend to know.
Robert Green Ingersoll
In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Every man who expresses an honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
The Christians say, that among the ancient Jews, if you committed a crime you had to kill a sheep. Now they say 'charge it.' 'Put it on the slate.' The Savior will pay it. In this way, rascality is sold on credit, and the credit system in morals, as in business, breeds extravagance.
Robert Green Ingersoll
And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?
Robert Green Ingersoll
If, with all the time at my disposal, with all the wealth of the resources of this vast universe, to do with as I will, I could not produce a better scheme of life than now prevails, I would be ashamed of my efforts and consider my work a humiliating failure.
Robert Green Ingersoll