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For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.
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
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Beliefs
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Mental
Garments
Habit
Fashioned
Depends
Surroundings
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Habits
Belief
Depend
Molded
Born
Opinions
Inherit
More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll
Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of anything.
Robert Green Ingersoll
No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me.
Robert Green Ingersoll
No man of sense in the whole world believes in devils any more than he does in mermaids, vampires, gorgons, hydras, naiads, dryads, nymphs, fairies, the Fountain of Youth, [or] the Philosopher's Stone. . . .
Robert Green Ingersoll
Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The only reason why we wish to exchange thoughts is that we are different. If we were all the same, we would die dumb. No thought would be expressed after we found that our thoughts were precisely alike. We differ-our thoughts are different. Therefore the commerse that we call conversation.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Do not trust those in whom the compulsion to punish is strong.
Robert Green Ingersoll
I am anxious to give away information, for it is only by giving it away that you can keep it. When you have told it, you remember it. It is with information as it is with liberty, the only way to be dead sure of it is to give it to other people.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.
Robert Green Ingersoll
As long as a man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school.
Robert Green Ingersoll
It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey. I believe it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts... I despise it, I defy it, and I hate it.
Robert Green Ingersoll
It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Creationists use facts the same way a drunk uses a lightpost: for support instead of illumination
Robert Green Ingersoll
