“It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.”
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: I want you to understand what has been done in the world to force men to think alike. It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike. Why did he not do so? Why did he make your brain so that you could not by any possibility be a Methodist? Why did he make yours so that you could not be a Catholic? And why did he make the brain of another so that he is an unbeliever — why the brain of another so that he became a Mohammedan — if he wanted us all to believe alike?
After all, maybe Nature is good enough and grand enough and broad enough to give us the diversity born of liberty. Maybe, after all, it would not be best for us all to be just the same. What a stupid world, if everybody said yes to everything that everybody else might say.
The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes — more important than gold or houses or lands — more important than art or science — more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Robert G. Ingersoll 439
Union United States Army officer 1833–1899Related quotes
“So then it is eternal and infinite and one and all alike.”
Fragments of Melissus's On Nature, Fragment 7
“We need not think alike to love alike.”
This attribution seems to have begun in the 1960s, and has been debunked at "Who really said that?" by Peter Hughes at UU World (15 August 2012) http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/229844.shtml; previously misattributed in A Chosen Faith (1991) by John A. Buehrens; also in Unitarian Universalist Origins: Our Historic Faith by Mark W. Harris https://web.archive.org/web/20060101061859/www.uua.org/info/origins.html
Misattributed
“I would like to see us recover our sense that we are more alike than different.”
2010s, 2018, The Restless Wave (2018)
Context: !-- I want to talk to my fellow Americans a little more, if I may: --> My fellow Americans. No association ever mattered more to me. We’re not always right. We’re impetuous and impatient, and rush into things without knowing what we’re really doing. We argue over little differences endlessly, and exaggerate them into lasting breaches. We can be selfish, and quick sometimes to shift the blame for our mistakes to others. But our country ‘tis of thee.‘ What great good we’ve done in the world, so much more good than harm. We served ourselves, of course, but we helped make others free, safe and prosperous because we weren’t threatened by other people’s liberty and success. We need each other. We need friends in the world, and they need us. The bell tolls for us, my friends, Humanity counts on us, and we ought to take measured pride in that. We have not been an island. We were ‘involved in mankind.‘
Before I leave, I’d like to see our politics begin to return to the purposes and practices that distinguish our history from the history of other nations. I would like to see us recover our sense that we are more alike than different. We are citizens of a republic made of shared ideals forged in a new world to replace the tribal enmities that tormented the old one. Even in times of political turmoil such as these, we share that awesome heritage and the responsibility to embrace it. Whether we think each other right or wrong in our views on the issues of the day, we owe each other our respect, as long as our character merits respect, and as long as we share, for all our differences, for all the rancorous debates that enliven and sometimes demean our politics, a mutual devotion to the ideals our nation was conceived to uphold, that all are created equal, and liberty and equal justice are the natural rights of all. Those rights inhabit the human heart, and from there, though they may be assailed, they can never be wrenched. I want to urge Americans, for as long as I can, to remember that this shared devotion to human rights is our truest heritage and our most important loyalty.
“I think a lot of snowflakes are alike… and I think a lot of people are alike too.”
Source: American Psycho
A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
“All roads alike may lead us unto Rome.”
Tutte le vie ponno condurre a Roma.
Stornelli Politici, "Giammai".
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 242.
