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Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.

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
Take
Atheist
Vacuums
Atheism
Vacuum
Remains
Unreasonable
Impossible
Supernatural
Religious
Agnostic
Church
Miraculous
Unknowable
Religion
Secular
Atheistic
Nothing
Absurd
Incomprehensible

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Every church that has a standard higher than human welfare is dangerous.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Darwin has done more to change human thought than all the priests who have existed.
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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He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He is the gentlest memory of our world.
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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If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our fellow men. We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife and child and friend.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If the money is raised by taxation, then the burden will fall where it ought to fall, . . . and the rich and stingy will no longer be able to evade the duties of citizenship and of humanity.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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[T]he blossom of benevolence, of charity, is the fairest flower, no matter whether it blooms by the side of a hovel, or bursts from a vine climbing the marble pillar of a palace. I respect no man because he is rich I hold in contempt no man because he is poor.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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We have at last ascertained that miracles can be perfectly understood that there is nothing mysterious about them that they are simply transparent falsehoods.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women - of free mothers.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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All religious systems enslave the mind. Certain things are demanded-certain things must be believed-certain things must be done-and the man who becomes the subject or servant of this superstition must give up all idea of indivuality or hope of intellectual growth or progress.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Great virtues may draw attention from defects, they cannot sanctify them. A pebble surrounded by diamonds remains a common stone, and a diamond surrounded by pebbles is still a gem.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If priests had not been fond of mutton, lambs never would have been sacrified to god. Nothing was ever carried to the temple that the priest could not use, and it always happened that god wanted what his agents liked.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Only those who live on the labor of the ignorant are the enemies of science. Real love and real religion are in no danger from science. The more we know the safer all good things are.
Robert Green Ingersoll