13 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes on Nature

Robert G. Ingersoll quotes on nature

13. There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments - there are only consequences. The life of Christ is worth its example, its moral force, its heroism of benevolence.

21. 'Oh,' they say to me, 'but you take away immortality.' I do not. If we are immortal it is a fact in nature, and we are not indebted to priests for it, nor to bibles for it, and it cannot be destroyed by unbelief.

71. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.

81. A man looks at the sea, and the sea says something to him. It makes an impression on his mind. It awakens his memory, and this impression depends upon his experience - upon his intellectual capacity. Another looks upon the same sea. He has a different brain; he has a different experience. The sea may speak to him of joy, to the other of grief and tears. The sea cannot tell the same thing to any two human beings, because no two human beings have had the same experience.

102. Every brain is a field where Nature sows the seeds of thought, and the crop depends upon the soil.

125. I believe in the religion of reason - the gospel of this world; in the development of the mind, in the accumulation of intellectual wealth, to the end that man may free himself from superstitious fear, to the end that he may take advantage of the forces of nature to feed and clothe the world.

162. Love is natural. Back of all ceremony burns and will forever burn the sacred flame. There has been no time in the world's history when that torch was extinguished. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, there has been true, pure, and unselfish love. Long before a ceremony was thought of, long before a priest existed, there were true and perfect marriages. Back of public opinion is natural modesty, the affections of the heart; and in spite of all law, there is and forever will be the realm of choice. Wherever love is, it is pure; and everywhere, and at all times, the ceremony of marriage testifies to that which has happened within the temple of the human heart.

163. Love is not a crime ... men and women should be proudly natural; they need not grovel on the earth and cover their faces for shame.

179. Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws.

190. The church cries now 'whom God hath joined together let not man put asunder;' but when the people are really civilized the state will say: 'whom Nature hath put asunder let not man bind and manacle together.'

209. The real marriage - the uniting of hearts, the lighting of the sacred flame in each - is the work of Nature, and it is the best work that nature does. The ceremony of marriage gives notice to the world that the real marriage has taken place.

215. There are no Gods, no angels, no devils, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens the hearts and enslaves minds.

216. There is no authority in churches or priests - no authority in numbers or majorities. The only authority is Nature - the facts we know. Facts are the masters, the enemies of the ignorant, the servants and friends of the intelligent.