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Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves.

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
False
Rule
True
Thought
Establishes
Things
Martyrdom
Never
Correctness
Martyr
Sincerity

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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I believe that there is something far nobler than loyalty to any particular man. Loyalty to the truth as we perceive it - loyalty to our duty as we know it - loyalty to the ideals of our brain and heart - is, to my mind, far greater and far nobler than loyalty to the life of any particular man or God. . . .
Robert Green Ingersoll
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A crime against god is a demonstrated impossibility.
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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The old lady who said there must be a devil, else how could they make pictures that looked exactly like him, reasoned like a trained theologian - like a doctor of divinity.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If nobody has too much, everybody will have enough.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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You see, after all, few rich men own their property. The property owns them.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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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The Christians say, that among the ancient Jews, if you committed a crime you had to kill a sheep. Now they say 'charge it.' 'Put it on the slate.' The Savior will pay it. In this way, rascality is sold on credit, and the credit system in morals, as in business, breeds extravagance.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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
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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
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If the money is raised by taxation, then the burden will fall where it ought to fall, . . . and the rich and stingy will no longer be able to evade the duties of citizenship and of humanity.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The good part of Christmas is not always Christian -- it is generally Pagan that is to say, human, natural.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob.
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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Injustice upon earth renders the justice of of heaven impossible.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The Catholic Church is a thousand times better than your Protestant Church upon that question [of damnation]. The Catholic Church believes in purgatory - that is, a place where a fellow can get a chance to make a motion for a new trial.
Robert Green Ingersoll