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When a fact can be demonstrated, force is unnecessary when it cannot be demonstrated, force is infamous.

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
Facts
Cannot
Infamous
Demonstrated
Unnecessary
Fact
Force

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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In making up my mind as to what Mr. Lincoln really believed, I do not take into consideration the evidence of unnamed persons or the contents of anonymous letters I take the testimony of those who knew and loved him, of those to whom he opened his heart and to whom he spoke in the freedom of perfect confidence.
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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He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He is the gentlest memory of our world.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I do not believe in loving enemies I have pretty hard work to love my friends. Neither do I believe in revenge. No man can afford to keep the viper of revenge in his heart. But I believe in justice, in self-defense.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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It is with men as with other things. The mullein needs only a year, but the oak a century, and the greatest men are those who have continued to grow as long as they have lived.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The church teaches us that we can make God happy by being miserable ourselves.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
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 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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Only those who live on the labor of the ignorant are the enemies of science. Real love and real religion are in no danger from science. The more we know the safer all good things are.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Language is not subtle enough, tender enough, to express all that we feel and when language fails, the highest and deepest longings are translated into music. Music is the sunshine - the climate - of the soul, and it floods the heart with a perfect June.
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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Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Argument cannot be answered with insults. Kindness is strength anger blows out the lamp of the mind.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Science built the Academy, superstition the Inquisition.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Millions of men give all their energies, as well as their very souls, for the acquisition of gold. And this will continue as long as society is ignorant enough and hypocritical enough to hold in high esteem the man of wealth without the slightest regard to the character of the man.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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When passions and appetites are stronger than the intellect, men are savages when the intellect governs the passions, when the passions are servants, men are civilized. The people need education - facts - philosophy.
Robert Green Ingersoll