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The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-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
Slave
Atheism
Wisdom
Freedom
Traitor
Doe
Intriguing
Men
Fellow
Thinking
Fellows
Independence

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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He loves his country best who strives to make it best.
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Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction.
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Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.
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The emblem of equal rights. It means free hands, free lips, self- government, and the sovereignty of the individual.
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The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence and secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn it ploughs no land it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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On every hand there seems to be design to defeat design. If God created man - if he is the father of us all, why did he make the criminals, the insane, the deformed and idiotic? Should the mother, who clasps to her breast an idiot child, thank God?
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called faith.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I am going to put the Bible out of business.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The few have said, Think! The many have said, Believe! The first doubt was the womb and cradle of progress, and from the first doubt, man has continued to advance.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Creationists use facts the same way a drunk uses a lightpost: for support instead of illumination
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Truth is the mother of joy. Truth civilizes, ennobles and purifies. The grandest ambition that can enter the soul is to know the truth.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If the reason I give is a good one, you will act upon it. If it is a bad one I cannot make it better by piling epithet upon epithet. There is no logic in abuse there is no argument in an epithet.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey. I believe it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts... I despise it, I defy it, and I hate it.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread - a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal.
Robert Green Ingersoll