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I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.

Robert Green Ingersoll

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Robert Green Ingersoll
Age: 65 †
Born: 1833
Born: August 11
Died: 1899
Died: July 21
Essayist
Lawyer
Lecturer
Orator
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Dresden
Yates County
New York
Robert Ingersoll
The Great Agnostic
Liberty
Creeds
Doubt
Thrive
Thought
Attack
Mind
Doctrine
Men
Minds
Crime
Enslave
Hold
Doctrines
Dangerous
Accord

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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Insolence is not logic epithets are the arguments of malice.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called 'natural' man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The only reason why we wish to exchange thoughts is that we are different. If we were all the same, we would die dumb. No thought would be expressed after we found that our thoughts were precisely alike. We differ-our thoughts are different. Therefore the commerse that we call conversation.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The idea that there is a God who rewards and punishes, and who can reward, if he so wishes, the meanest and vilest of the human race, so that he will be eternally happy, and can punish the best of the human race, so that he will be eternally miserable, is subversive of all morality.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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In making up my mind as to what Mr. Lincoln really believed, I do not take into consideration the evidence of unnamed persons or the contents of anonymous letters I take the testimony of those who knew and loved him, of those to whom he opened his heart and to whom he spoke in the freedom of perfect confidence.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Some president wishes to be re-elected, and thereupon speaks about the Bible as the corner-stone of American Liberty. This sentence is a mouth large enough to swallow any church, and from that time forward the religious people will be citing that remark of the politician to substantiate the inspiration of the Scriptures.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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You see, after all, few rich men own their property. The property owns them.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes - more important than gold or houses or lands - more important than art or science - more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he should have used it.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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It is with men as with other things. The mullein needs only a year, but the oak a century, and the greatest men are those who have continued to grow as long as they have lived.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Nothing could be more dangerous to the existence of this Republic than to introduce religion into politics
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Intellect, without heart, is infinitely cruel. . . . So that, after all, the real aristocracy must be that of goodness where the intellect is directed by the heart.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The emblem of equal rights. It means free hands, free lips, self- government, and the sovereignty of the individual.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If, with all the time at my disposal, with all the wealth of the resources of this vast universe, to do with as I will, I could not produce a better scheme of life than now prevails, I would be ashamed of my efforts and consider my work a humiliating failure.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The man who finds a truth lights a torch.
Robert Green Ingersoll