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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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Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world.
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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.
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I admit that books were voted in and out, and that the Bible was finally formed in accordance with a vote.
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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.
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I read the other day an account of a meeting between John Knox and John Calvin. Imagine a dialogue between a pestilence and a famine!
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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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Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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One man in the right will finally get to be a majority.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Commerce is the great civilizer.
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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Reason is the light, the sun of the brain. It is the compass of the mind, the ever-constant Northern Star, the mountain peak that lifts itself above all clouds.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.
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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The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
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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As we become civilized we are governed less by persons and more by principles. . . . The best of all leaders is the man who teaches people to lead themselves.
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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Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.
Robert Green Ingersoll