in one gospel the condition of
salvation is "whosoever believeth shall not be damned," and in another
we are promised that if we forgive our enemies God will forgive us--and
there's sense in this last promise. The first I believe a lie--it was
never spoken by God.

Christ said: Love your enemies. Nobody can do that. The doctrine of
Confucius is sound--to love one's friends and to do justice to one's
enemies without any mixture of revenge.

If Christ was God, did He not know on His cross what crimes would be
done in His name? Why didn't He settle all disputes about the trinity
and about baptism? Why didn't He post His disciples? Because He could
no more see into the future than I can. Only in this way can you
acquit him of the crimes committed in His name. The way to save our own
souls is to save another soul. God can't turn into hell a man who
makes on this earth a little heaven for himself, wife and babes.

Any minister who preaches the doctrine of hell ought to be ashamed. I
want, if I can while I live, to put an end to all belief in this
infamous doctrine. That doctrine has done incalculable harm, wrought
incalculable injury. I despise it, and I defy it.

The orthodox church says that religion does good; that it restrains
crime. It restrains a man from artificial, not from natural crimes. A
man can be made so religious that he will not eat meat on Friday, yet
he will steal.

Did you ever hear of a tramp coming to town and inquiring where the
deacon of the Presbyterian church lived.

The bible says consider the lilies. What good would it do a naked man
standing out in the bitter blasts of this night to consider the lilies.

What is the social position of a man in heaven who through all eternity
remembers that if he had had a grain of courage he would never have
been there.

The realization of our day does not satisfy the intelligence of the
people--the people have outgrown it. It shocks us and we have got to
have another religion. We must have a religion of charity; one that
will do away with poverty, close the prisons and cover this world with
homes.

Ingersoll's Lecture on Heretics and Heresies

"Liberty, a word without which--All other words are vain."

Whoever has an opinion of his own, and honestly expresses it, will be
guilty of heresy. Heresy is what the minority believe; it is a name
given by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak. This word was born
of the hatred,