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I am not so much for the freedom of religion as I am for the religion of freedom.

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
Freedom
Religion
Much

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He is the gentlest memory of our world.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread - a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal.
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
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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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And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil pray for those that despitefully use you love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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But honest men do not pretend to know they are candid and sincere they love the truth they admit their ignorance, and they say, We do not know.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Music expresses feeling and thought, without language it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Ignorance worships mystery reason explains it the one grovels, the other soars.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.
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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If the world ever advances beyond what it is today, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Arguments cannot be answered with insults. . . . Kindness is strength. . . . Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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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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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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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Shakespeare has done far more for the world than the Bible.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything. Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay.
Robert Green Ingersoll