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Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called 'natural' man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation.

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
Civilization
Called
Faculties
Natural
Improvisation
Use
Uses
Men
Faculty
Gotten
Invention
Perception

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Creationists use facts the same way a drunk uses a lightpost: for support instead of illumination
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The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn-the less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything.
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There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: Let us be friends.
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When a fact can be demonstrated, force is unnecessary when it cannot be demonstrated, force is infamous.
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An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment.
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Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies the one enriches, and the other impoverishes the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed.
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Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
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The whip degrades a severe father teaches his children to dissemble their love is pretense, and their obedience a species of self-defense. Fear is the father of lies.
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Strange but true: those who have loved God most have loved men least.
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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.
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If the property belongs to God he is able to pay the tax.
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Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud-and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.
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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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To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Orthodoxy cannot afford to put out the fires of hell.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Science built the Academy, superstition the Inquisition.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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All religious systems enslave the mind. Certain things are demanded-certain things must be believed-certain things must be done-and the man who becomes the subject or servant of this superstition must give up all idea of indivuality or hope of intellectual growth or progress.
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Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.
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