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If there be an infinite Being, he does not need our help - we need not waste our energies in his defense.

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
Help
Energy
Helping
Doe
Energies
Need
Defense
Needs
Atheism
Infinite
Waste

More quotes by 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
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Laughing has always been considered by theologians as a crime.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Shakespeare has done far more for the world than the Bible.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest ... The dead do not suffer.
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.
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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Every child should be taught that useful work is worship and that intelligent labor is the highest form of prayer.
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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Blasphemy is what an old dogma screams at a new truth.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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He (Thomas Paine) saw oppression on every hand injustice everywhere hypocrisy at the altar venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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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The man who invented the telescope found out more about heaven than the closed eyes of prayer ever discovered.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I would rather smoke one cigar than hear two sermons.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Burns had his faults, his frailties. He was intensely human. Still, I would rather appear at the Judgment Seat drunk, and be able to say that I was the author of A man's a man for 'a that, than to be perfectly sober and admit that I had lived and died a Scotch Presbyterian.
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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As far as I am concerned I wish to be out on the high seas. I wish to take my chances with wind, and wave, and star. And I had rather go down in the glory and grandeur of the storm, than rot in any orthodox harbor.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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There are some truths, however, that we should never forget: Superstition has always been the relentless enemy of science faith has been a hater of demonstration hypocrisy has been sincere only in its dread of truth, and all religions are inconsistent with mental freedom.
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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The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.
Robert Green Ingersoll