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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.

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
Everyone
Filled
Deformity
Work
Labor
Aristocratic
Every
Crime
Disgraceful
Long
Taught
Splendor
World
Honest
Nobility
Effort
Idleness
Possible
Heroism
Moral
Considered

More quotes by 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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Hope is the consolation of the world.
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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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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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
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If the property belongs to God he is able to pay the tax.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Reason, observation, and experience the holy trinity of science.
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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Talent has the four seasons: spring, that is to say, the sowing of the seeds summer, growth autumn, the harvest winter, intellectual death. But there is now and then a genius who has no winter, and, no matter how many years he may live, on the blossom of his thought no snow falls. Genius has the climate of perpetual growth.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Some president wishes to be re-elected, and thereupon speaks about the Bible as the corner-stone of American Liberty. This sentence is a mouth large enough to swallow any church, and from that time forward the religious people will be citing that remark of the politician to substantiate the inspiration of the Scriptures.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The man who finds a truth lights a torch.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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As long as a man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul, breaking the mental manacles, getting the brain out of bondage, giving courage to thought, filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If I had my way I'd make health catching instead of disease.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.
Robert Green Ingersoll