WIST Quotations

Ingersoll, Robert Green -- Lecture (1884-01-20), “Orthodoxy,” Tabor Opera House, Denver, Colorado

Dave — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 23:51:36 +0000

In his infinite goodness, God invented rheumatism and gout and dyspepsia, cancers and neuralgia, and is still inventing new diseases. Not only this, but he decreed the pangs of mothers, and that by the gates of love and life should crouch the dragons of death and pain. Fearing that some might, by accident, live too long, he planted poisonous vines and herbs that looked like food. He caught the serpents he had made and gave them fangs and curious organs, ingeniously devised to distill and deposit the deadly drop. He changed the nature of the beasts, that they might feed on human flesh. He cursed a world, and tainted every spring and source of joy. He poisoned every breath of air; corrupted even light, that it might bear disease on every ray; tainted every drop of blood in human veins; touched every nerve, that it might bear the double fruit of pain and joy; decreed all accidents and mistakes that maim and hurt and kill, and set the snares of life-long grief, baited with present pleasure, — with a moment’s joy. Then and there he foreknew and foreordained all human tears. And yet all this is but the prelude, the introduction, to the infinite revenge of the good God. Increase and multiply all human griefs until the mind has reached imagination’s farthest verge, then add eternity to time, and you may faintly tell, but never can conceive, the infinite horrors of this doctrine called “The Fall of Man.”

Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, freethinker, orator
Lecture (1884-01-20), “Orthodoxy,” Tabor Opera House, Denver, Colorado
(Source)

Published as its own book in 1884.

Wilde, Oscar -- Essay (1891-02), “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” The Fortnightly Review, Vol. 49

Dave — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 19:09:37 +0000

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
Essay (1891-02), “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” The Fortnightly Review, Vol. 49
(Source)

Tuchman, Barbara -- A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, ch. 9 (1978)

Dave — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 15:36:07 +0000

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912-1989) American historian and author
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, ch. 9 (1978)
(Source)

Scalzi, John -- The Ghost Brigades, ch. 13 (2006)

Dave — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:12:11 +0000

She was temptable — which, if you believe in an all-powerful God, means God intentionally put temptation into Eve. Which seems like a dirty trick, if you ask me.

John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer
The Ghost Brigades, ch. 13 (2006)

Twain, Mark -- The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, ch. 2 (1894)

Dave — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 15:21:15 +0000

Adam was but human — this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, ch. 2 (1894)

Machiavelli, Niccolo -- The Discourses on Livy, Book 1, Introduction (1517) [tr. Detmold (1882)]

Dave — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:01:57 +0000

Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) Italian politician, philosopher, political scientist
The Discourses on Livy, Book 1, Introduction (1517) [tr. Detmold (1882)]

Alt. trans.: "It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope." [Discourse upon the First Ten Books of Livy, Book 1, ch. 3 (1513-18) [tr. Gilbert]]

Kafka, Franz -- Notebook, Aphorism # 3 (1917-10-20) [tr. Kaiser and Wilkins]

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

There are two main human sins from which all the others derive: impatience and indolence. It was because of impatience that they were expelled from Paradise; it is because of indolence that they do not return. Yet perhaps there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience they were expelled, because of impatience they do not return.

[Es gibt zwei menschliche Hauptsünden, aus welchen sich alle andern ableiten: Ungeduld und Lässigkeit. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie aus dem Paradiese vertrieben worden, wegen der Lässigkeit kehren sie nicht zurück. Vielleicht aber gibt es nur eine Hauptsünde: die Ungeduld. Wegen der Ungeduld sind sie vertrieben worden, wegen der Ungeduld kehren sie nicht zurück.]

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) Czech-Austrian Jewish writer
Notebook, Aphorism # 3 (1917-10-20) [tr. Kaiser and Wilkins]

In The Blue Octavo Notebooks (1954) and in Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings (1954); variant translations use "cardinal sins" instead of "main human sins" and "laziness" instead of "indolence", e.g., "There are two cardinal sins from which all others spring: impatience and laziness."