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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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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
Teaches
Miserable
Teach
Church
Happy
Make

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The whip degrades a severe father teaches his children to dissemble their love is pretense, and their obedience a species of self-defense. Fear is the father of lies.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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the inventor of the plow did more good than the maker of the first rosary - because, say what you will, plowing is better than praying.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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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We must remember that we have to make judges out of men, and that by being made judges their prejudices are not diminished and their intelligence is not increased.
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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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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I have no confidence in any religion that can be demonstrated only to children.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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All religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. Shakespeare is my bible, Burns my hymn-book.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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[T]he blossom of benevolence, of charity, is the fairest flower, no matter whether it blooms by the side of a hovel, or bursts from a vine climbing the marble pillar of a palace. I respect no man because he is rich I hold in contempt no man because he is poor.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music.
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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Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning.
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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Some president wishes to be re-elected, and thereupon speaks about the Bible as the corner-stone of American Liberty. This sentence is a mouth large enough to swallow any church, and from that time forward the religious people will be citing that remark of the politician to substantiate the inspiration of the Scriptures.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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On every hand there seems to be design to defeat design. If God created man - if he is the father of us all, why did he make the criminals, the insane, the deformed and idiotic? Should the mother, who clasps to her breast an idiot child, thank God?
Robert Green Ingersoll