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The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.

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
Atheism
Intellectual
Depends
Religion
Often
Superstition
Truth
Advancement
Men
Superstitions
Exchange

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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The whip degrades a severe father teaches his children to dissemble their love is pretense, and their obedience a species of self-defense. Fear is the father of lies.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Everyone should be taught the nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity.
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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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Reason, observation, and experience the holy trinity of science.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If the property belongs to God he is able to pay the tax.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If we are immortal, it is a fact of nature, and that fact does not depend on bibles, on Christs, priest, or creeds.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything. Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.
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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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
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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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What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If all the historic books of the Bible were blotted from the memory of mankind, nothing of value would be lost.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The book, called the Bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! This is the book they wish to be recognized in our Constitution as the source of all authority and justice!
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Every man who expresses an honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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He (Thomas Paine) saw oppression on every hand injustice everywhere hypocrisy at the altar venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong
Robert Green Ingersoll
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We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living-Hope for the dead.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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It is grander to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.
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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The few took advantage of the ignorant many. They pretended to have received messages from the Unknown. They stood between the helpless multitude and the gods. They were the carriers of flags of truce. At the court of heaven they presented the cause of man, and upon the labor of the deceived they lived.
Robert Green Ingersoll