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The combined wisdom and genius of all mankind cannot possibly conceive of an argument against liberty of thought.

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
Thought
Possibly
Independence
Argument
Genius
Mankind
Liberty
Wisdom
Conceive
Cannot
Combined

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Do not trust those in whom the compulsion to punish is strong.
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Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers: It is the only prayer that deserves an answer—good, honest, noble work.
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Grant others the same rights as you claim for yourself.
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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.
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Love your friends and be just to your enemies.
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But honest men do not pretend to know they are candid and sincere they love the truth they admit their ignorance, and they say, We do not know.
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To know that the Bible is the literature of a barbarous people, to know that it is uninspired, to be certain that the supernatural does not and cannot exist - all this is but the beginning of wisdom.
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Abraham Lincoln was, in my judgment, in many respects, the grandest man ever President of the United States. Upon his monument these words should be written: Here sleeps the only man in the history of the world who, having been clothed with almost absolute power, never abused it, except upon the side of mercy.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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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Every human being should be taught that his first duty is to take care of himself, and that to be self-respecting he must be self-supporting. To live on the labor of others, either by force which enslaves, or by cunning which robs, or by borrowing or begging, is wholly dishonorable. Every man should be taught some useful art.
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Commerce is the great civilizer.
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I would not for my life destroy one star of human hope, but I want it so that when a poor woman rocks the cradle and sings a lullaby to the dimpled darling, she will not be compelled to believe that ninety-nine chances in a hundred she is raising kindling wood for hell.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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.
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.
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Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.
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.
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When struck on one cheek to turn the other, is really joining a conspiracy to secure the triumph of brutality. To agree not to resist evil is to become an accomplice of all injustice.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything. Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If we are immortal, it is a fact of nature, and that fact does not depend on bibles, on Christs, priest, or creeds.
Robert Green Ingersoll