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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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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
Children
Demonstrated
Confidence
Religion

More quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: Let us be friends.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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When passions and appetites are stronger than the intellect, men are savages when the intellect governs the passions, when the passions are servants, men are civilized. The people need education - facts - philosophy.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Would God give a bird wings and make it a crime to fly? Would he give me brains and make it a crime to think? Any God that would damn one of his children for the expression of his honest thought wouldn't make a decent thief. When I read a book and don't believe it, I ought to say so. I will do so and take the consequences like a man.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Honesty is the mother of confidence it unites, combines and solidifies society. Dishonesty is disintegration it destroys confidence it brings social chaos. . . .
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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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
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The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence and secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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I am simply in favor of intellectual hospitality-that is all. You come to me with a new idea. I invite you into the house. Let us see what you have. Let us talk it over. If I do not like your thought, I will bid it a polite good day. If I do like it, I will say: Sit down stay with me, and become a part of the intellectual wealth of my world.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead, and every sweet unselfish act is now a perfumed flower.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Christianity has made more lunatics than it ever provided asylums for.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud
Robert Green Ingersoll
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If I had my way I'd make health catching instead of disease.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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Why should we postpone our joy to another world? Let us get all we can of the good between the cradle and the grave, all that we can of the truly dramatic. If, when death comes, that is the end, we have at least made the best of this life.
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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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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I admit that books were voted in and out, and that the Bible was finally formed in accordance with a vote.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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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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Every cradle asks us, Whence? and every coffin, Whither? The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.
Robert Green Ingersoll