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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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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
Persons
Leaders
Best
Lead
Men
Leadership
People
Leader
Principles
Teach
Governed
Less
Teaches
Become
Civilized
More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll
It is told that the great Angelo, in decorating a church, painted some angels wearing sandals. A cardinal looking at the picture said to the artist: Whoever saw angels with sandals? Angelo answered with another question: Whoever saw an angel barefooted?
Robert Green Ingersoll
And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?
Robert Green Ingersoll
Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The idea that there is a God who rewards and punishes, and who can reward, if he so wishes, the meanest and vilest of the human race, so that he will be eternally happy, and can punish the best of the human race, so that he will be eternally miserable, is subversive of all morality.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
Every child should be taught that useful work is worship and that intelligent labor is the highest form of prayer.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Every man who expresses an honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
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
Above all things, one should maintain his self-respect, and there is but one way to do that, and that is to live in accordance with your highest ideal.
Robert Green Ingersoll
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
Robert Green Ingersoll
So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.
Robert Green Ingersoll
If there be an infinite Being, he does not need our help - we need not waste our energies in his defense.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Intellect, without heart, is infinitely cruel. . . .
Robert Green Ingersoll
If nobody has too much, everybody will have enough.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.
Robert Green Ingersoll
By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think and the right to think wrong.
Robert Green Ingersoll
There are some truths, however, that we should never forget: Superstition has always been the relentless enemy of science faith has been a hater of demonstration hypocrisy has been sincere only in its dread of truth, and all religions are inconsistent with mental freedom.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
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
