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The first duty of man is to support himself - to see to it that he does not become a burden. His next duty is to help others if he has a surplus, and if he really believes they deserve to be helped.

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
Money
Burden
Become
Deserve
Doe
Duty
Firsts
Support
First
Help
Believe
Helping
Surplus
Really
Next
Believes
Men
Others
Helped

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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There is only one way to be happy, and that is to make somebody else so, and you cannot be happy by going cross lots you have got to go the regular turnpike road.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
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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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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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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An infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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It is better to deserve without receiving than to receive without deserving
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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He loves his country best who strives to make it best.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him.
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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Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn it ploughs no land it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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No man of sense in the whole world believes in devils any more than he does in mermaids, vampires, gorgons, hydras, naiads, dryads, nymphs, fairies, the Fountain of Youth, [or] the Philosopher's Stone. . . .
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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
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My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world.
Robert Green Ingersoll