Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

… heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us.... And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them.

You cannot imprison an idea. You have to fight it with a better idea.

You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

The heretic is always better dead. And mortal eyes cannot distinguish the saint from the heretic.

Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.

The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change, but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.

What survived as orthodox Christianity did so by suppressing and forcibly eliminating a lot of other material.

You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.

The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget old ideas.

So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

You know, the truth is this: it is a leader's job to challenge the status quo. And when you do, you make enemies.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

You shouldn't fight change. You should be absolutely open to change.

I love a challenge, and I love challenging people's preconceptions.

When new things come along, some people always want the newest of the new - 'This is what I've been waiting for!' - and some people don't want or need the change - 'I like my old one.'

People who love soft methods and hate iniquity forget this; that reform consists in taking a bone from a dog. Philosophy will not do it.

All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.

Ideas can never be defeated by military force. They can only be defeated by better ideas.

We have to struggle with pedantry, with intolerance, with divines and statesmen, and above all, princes and priests are in our way.

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.

No great reform can be achieved except at the sacrifice of some opinion.

It is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hidden treasure