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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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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
Pulpit
Hired
Defending
Stands
Atheism
Justice
Every
Culprit
Imprisonment

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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If the reason I give is a good one, you will act upon it. If it is a bad one I cannot make it better by piling epithet upon epithet. There is no logic in abuse there is no argument in an epithet.
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Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes - more important than gold or houses or lands - more important than art or science - more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.
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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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I have no confidence in any religion that can be demonstrated only to children.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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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Orthodoxy cannot afford to put out the fires of hell.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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With soap, baptism is a good thing.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Science built the Academy, superstition the Inquisition.
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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They knew no better, but I do not propose to follow the example of a barbarian because he was honestly a barbarian.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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He who dishonors himself [by lying about his opinions] for the sake of being honored by others will find that two mistakes have been made - one by himself, and the other, by the people.
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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There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Every cradle asks us, Whence? and every coffin, Whither? The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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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According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to himself and the other two.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The few took advantage of the ignorant many. They pretended to have received messages from the Unknown. They stood between the helpless multitude and the gods. They were the carriers of flags of truce. At the court of heaven they presented the cause of man, and upon the labor of the deceived they lived.
Robert Green Ingersoll