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We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.

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
Horizon
Ignorant
Asked
Beyond
Honest
Known
Must

More quotes by 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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The man who finds a truth lights a torch.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The more liberty you give away the more you will have.
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Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, Halt! A creed is the ignorant Past bulling the enlightened Present.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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It has always seemed to me that a being coming from another world, with a message of infinite importance to mankind, should at least have verified that message by his own signature. Is it not wonderful that not one word was written by Christ?
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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The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The myth of hell represents all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I am simply in favor of intellectual hospitality-that is all. You come to me with a new idea. I invite you into the house. Let us see what you have. Let us talk it over. If I do not like your thought, I will bid it a polite good day. If I do like it, I will say: Sit down stay with me, and become a part of the intellectual wealth of my world.
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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Now the struggle for life is so sharp, competition is so severe, that few men can succeed who carry a useless burden. The businessmen of our country are compelled to lead temperate lives, otherwise their credit is gone.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If this religion is true, then there is only one Savior, only one narrow path to life. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other religion.
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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To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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We are not accountable for the sins of Adam.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Millions of men give all their energies, as well as their very souls, for the acquisition of gold. And this will continue as long as society is ignorant enough and hypocritical enough to hold in high esteem the man of wealth without the slightest regard to the character of the man.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task.
Robert Green Ingersoll