“Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal jailer hardens, debases, and pollutes even the vilest soul. . . . Any man who believes it [the doctrine that hell exists] and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena.”
–“The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child”
“It would be hard to overstate the time and talent wasted in the study of this so-called science. The men who believed in astrology thought that they lived in a supernatural world–a world in which causes and effects had no necessary connection with each other–in which all events were the result of magic and necromancy.
“Even now, at the close of the nineteenth centjury, there are hundreds of men who make their living by casting the horoscopes of idiots and imbeciles.”
–Robert Ingersoll, “Which Way?”
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quoted in The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations
Robert G. Ingersoll (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“To compel man to desert the standard of reason, the church does not entirely rely on the threat of eternal pain to be endured in another world, but holds out the reward of eternal joy. To those who believe, it promises the endless ecstasies of heaven. If it cannot frighten, it will bribe.”
–Robert Ingersoll, quoted in The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations
“The trouble with most people is, they bow to what is called authority; they have a certain reverence for the old because it is old. They think a man is better for being dead, especially if he has been dead a long time.”
–Robert Ingersoll, Individuality
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Quoted in The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations
“Nothing is more sickening than the ‘spiritual’ whine–the pretense that crawls at first and talks about humility and then suddenly becomes arrogant and says, ‘I am spiritual.'”
–Robert Ingersoll, “Spirituality”
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Quoted in The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations.
Sharp and Pointed 