Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other impoverishes; the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed.
Robert Green IngersollEvery pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.
Robert Green IngersollIf you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing.
Robert Green IngersollWhoever increases the sum of human joy, is a worshiper. He who adds to the sum of human misery, is a blasphemer.
Robert Green IngersollEvery man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers... every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the naked back were a legal tender for labour performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child - every solitary one was a Democrat.
Robert Green IngersollCrimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen and heads-men — and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities have committed far more crimes than they have prevented.... Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime. As long as dishonorable success outranks honest effort — as long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails.
Robert Green Ingersoll