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Robert Ingersoll citations
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Le colonel Robert Green Ingersoll est un leader politique américain, vétéran de la guerre de Sécession et orateur célèbre durant l’âge d’or de la libre pensée aux États-Unis , renommé pour sa vaste culture et sa défense de l’agnosticisme. Wikipedia  

✵ 11. août 1833 – 21. juillet 1899   •   Autres noms 罗伯特·格林·英格索尔, 羅伯特·格林·英格索爾, رابرت اینقرسول, Роберт Ингерсолл
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Robert Ingersoll: 439   citations 0   J'aime

Robert Ingersoll: Citations en anglais

“The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Liberty.

“An honest God is the noblest work of man.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

This is derived from Alexander Pope's "An honest man's the noblest work of God." Motto of the essay "The Gods" (1876) as published in The Gods and Other Lectures (1879).

“Our ancestors in the ages that are gone really believed that by force you could convince a man. You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by force, but I will tell you what you can do by force, and what you have done by force. You can make hypocrites by the million.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

[www.gutenberg.org/files/8389/8389-h/8389-h.htm#liberty] Ingersoll's Lecture on Liberty of Man, Woman and Child

“In the progress of mankind, the few have been the nearest right. There have been centuries in which the light seemed to emanate only from a handful of men, while the rest of the world was enveloped in darkness. Some great man leads the way—he becomes the morning star, the prophet of a coming day. Afterward, many millions accept his views. But there are still heights above and beyond; there are other pioneers, and the old day, in comparison with the new, becomes a night. So, we cannot say that success demonstrates either divine origin or supernatural aid.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)

“We all know that the Bible upholds slavery in its very worst and most cruel form; and how it can be said that a religion founded upon a Bible that upholds the institution of slavery has taught and established the fact of human brotherhood, is beyond my imagination to conceive.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

“Why should we fear that which will come to all that is?
We cannot tell, we do not know, which is the greater blessing — life or death. We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life, or the door of another, or whether the night here is not somewhere else at dawn. Neither can we tell which is the more fortunate — the child dying in its mother's arms, before its lips have learned to form a word, or he who journeys all the length of life's uneven road, painfully taking the last slow steps with staff and crutch.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

At A Child's Grave (1882)

“I cannot believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. I would rather that every god would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

What Must We Do To Be Saved? (1880) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38801/38801-h/38801-h.htm Section X, "The Evangelical Alliance."

“When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God’s sheep and Devil’s goats, into people who will be glorified and people who will be damned. If Christ, in fact, said “I came not to bring peace but a sword,” it is the only prophecy in the New Testament that has been literally fulfilled.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Some Reasons Why (1881)

“It may be said that it is unfair to call attention to bad things in the Bible. To this it may be replied that a divine being ought not to put bad things in his book.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Some Reasons Why (1881)

“Theologians, pretenders, soothsayers, parsons, priests, popes, bishops, have taken advantage of that. They have stood by graves and promised heaven. They have stood by graves and prophesied a future filled with pain. They have erected their toll-gates on the highway of life and have collected money from fear.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Orthodoxy (1884)

“The church has not turned the minds of men toward principles of justice, mercy and truth—it has destroyed the foundation of justice. It does not minister comfort at the coffin—it fills the mourners with fear. It has never preached a gospel of “Peace on Earth”—it has never preached “Good Will toward men.””

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Answer to Lyman Abbott (unfinished), responding to Abbott, Lyman. "Flaws in Ingersollism." The North American Review 150, no. 401 (1890): 446-457.

“Morality does not come from the clouds; it is born of human want and human experience. We need no inspiration, no inspired work. The industrious man knows that the idle has no right to rob him of the product of his labor, and the idle man knows that he has no right to do it. It is not wrong because we find it in the Bible, but I presume it was put in the Bible because it is wrong.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.

“Let us be honest. Suppose a man came into this city and should meet a funeral procession, and say, “Who is dead?” and they should reply, “The son of a widow; her only support.” Suppose he should say to the procession, “Halt!” and to the undertaker, “Take out that coffin, unscrew that lid. Young man, I say unto thee, arise!” and the dead should step from the coffin and in a moment afterward hold his mother in his arms. Suppose this stranger should go to your cemetery and find some woman holding a little child in each hand, while the tears fell upon a new-made grave, and he should say to her, “Who lies buried here?” and she should reply, “My husband;” and he should cry, “I say unto thee, oh grave, give up thy dead!” and the husband should rise, and in a moment after have his lips upon his wife’s, and the little children with their arms around his neck; do you think that the people of this city would kill him? Do you think any one would wish to crucify him? Do you not rather believe that every one who had a loved one out in that cemetery would go to him, even upon their knees, and beg him to give back their dead? Do you believe that any man was ever crucified who was the master of death?”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Orthodoxy (1884)

“As long as the church has the power to close the lips of men, so long and no longer will superstition rule this world.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

“By Christianity I do not mean charity, mercy, kindness, forgiveness. I mean no natural virtue, because all the natural virtues existed and had been practiced by hundreds and thousands of millions before Christ was born. There certainly were some good men even in the days of Christ in Jerusalem, before his death. By Christianity I mean the ideas of redemption, atonement, a good man dying for a bad man, and the bad man getting a receipt in full. By Christianity I mean that system that insists that in the next world a few will be forever happy, while the many will be eternally miserable. Christianity, as I have explained it, must be protected, guarded, and sustained by law. It was founded by the sword that is to say, by physical force,—and must be preserved by like means.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.

“The night of the Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years. The first star that enriched the horizon of this universal gloom was Giordano Bruno. He was the herald of the dawn.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

The Great Infidels (1881)

“Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Address to the McKinley League, New York (29 October 1896)

“I know not what discoveries, what inventions, what thoughts may leap from the brain of the world. I know not what garments of glory may be woven by the years to come. I cannot dream of the victories to be won upon the fields of thought; but I do know, that coming from the infinite sea of the future, there will never touch this "bank and shoal of time" a richer gift, a rarer blessing than liberty for man, for woman, and for child.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)

“the good men, the good women, are tired of the whip and lash in the realm of thought. They remember the chain and fagot with a shudder. They are free, and they give liberty to others; whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child (1877)

“He came, they tell us, to make a revelation, and what did he reveal? “Love thy neighbor as thyself”? That was in the Old Testament. “Love God with all thy heart”? That was in the Old Testament. “Return good for evil”? That was said by Buddha, seven hundred years before Christ was born. “Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you”? That was the doctrine of Lao-tsze. Did he come to give a rule of action? Zoroaster had done this long before: “Whenever thou art in doubt as to whether an action is good or bad, abstain from it.””

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Some Reasons Why (1881)

“No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

“Anything that can be laughed out of this world ought not to stay in it.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

“The “magnificent Psalm of Praise to the Creator with which Genesis opens” is filled with magnificent mistakes, and is utterly absurd. “The beautiful legend of the first sin and its fateful consequences” is probably the most contemptible story that was ever written, and the treatment of the first pair by Jehovah is unparalleled in the cruelty of despotic governments. According to this infamous account, God cursed the mothers of the world, and added to the agonies of maternity. Not only so, but he made woman a slave, and man something, if possible, meaner—a master.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Answer to Lyman Abbott (unfinished), responding to Abbott, Lyman. "Flaws in Ingersollism." The North American Review 150, no. 401 (1890): 446-457.

“The murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell, meets death without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ, or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost. The king who has waged cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with widows and fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who has succeeded in offering to the Moloch of ambition the best and bravest of his subjects, dies like a saint.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

The Great Infidels (1881)

“The world for the most part is ruled by the tomb, and the living are tyrannized over by the dead. Old ideas, long after the conditions under which they were produced have passed away, often persist in surviving. Many are disposed to worship the ancient—to follow the old paths, without inquiring where they lead, and without knowing exactly where they wish to go themselves.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Is Divorce Wrong? (1889)

“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.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

At A Child's Grave (1882)

“It does not seem possible to me that a God who loved men to that degree that he died that they might be saved, abandons his children the moment they are dead. It seems to me that an infinite God might do something for a soul after it has reached the other world.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

“Majorities are not necessarily right. If anything is known—if anything can be known—we are sure that very large bodies of men have frequently been wrong.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)

“When the minister leaves the seminary, he is not seeking the truth. He has it. He has a revelation from God, and he has a creed in exact accordance with that revelation. His business is to stand by that revelation and to defend that creed. Arguments against the revelation and the creed he will not read, he will not hear. All facts that are against his religion he will deny.”

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Robert G. Ingersoll

The Truth (1896)

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