“Is it the result of impotent rage? Is it because there is being written upon every orthodox brain a certificate of intellectual inferiority?”

—  Robert G. Ingersoll

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: It is a mystery to me why the editors of religious papers are so malicious, why they endeavor to answer argument with calumny. Is it because they feel the sceptre slowly slipping from their hands? Is it the result of impotent rage? Is it because there is being written upon every orthodox brain a certificate of intellectual inferiority?

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Is it the result of impotent rage? Is it because there is being written upon every orthodox brain a certificate of inte…" by Robert G. Ingersoll?
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Robert G. Ingersoll 439
Union United States Army officer 1833–1899

Related quotes

Rita Levi-Montalcini photo

“It is imperfection — not perfection — that is the end result of the program written into that formidably complex engine that is the human brain, and of the influences exerted upon us by the environment and whoever takes care of us during the long years of our physical, psychological and intellectual development.”

Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909–2012) Italian neurologist

Quoted in New York Times obituary http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/science/dr-rita-levi-montalcini-a-revolutionary-in-the-study-of-the-brain-dies-at-103.html?_r=0

Octave Mirbeau photo

“Every intellectual effort is bent towards committing the most diversified violations upon the human being.”

Octave Mirbeau (1848–1917) French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright
Arthur Symons photo

“My life is like a music-hall,
Where, in the impotence of rage,
Chained by enchantment to my stall,
I see myself upon the stage
Dance to amuse a music-hall.”

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) British poet

In The Stalls , st. 1.

“Many a superior brain is blockaded by inferior thoughts.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 69

Jacques Maritain photo

“To be free is of the essence of every intellectual being.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Freedom in the Modern World, (1933, Notre Dame Edition), p. 6.

Allan Kardec photo

“Intellectual superiority is not always accompanied by an equal degree of moral superiority, and the greatest geniuses may have much to expiate. For this reason, they often have to undergo an existence inferior to the one they have previously accomplished, which is a cause of suffering for them the hindrances to the manifestation of his faculties thus imposed upon a spirit being like chains that fetter the movements of a vigorous man. The idiot may be said to be lame in the brain, as the halt is lame in the legs, and the blind, in the eyes.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 193.

“We are approaching a darkness in the land. Boys and girls are emerging from every level of school with certificates and degrees, but they can't read, write or calculate. We don't have academic honesty or intellectual rigor. Schools have abandoned integrity and rigor.”

Julius Sumner Miller (1909–1987) American physicist

As quoted in "TV and Classroom Physicist : 'Professor Wonderful,' Julius Sumner Miller, Dies" by Gerald Faris, in The Los Angeles Times (16 April 1987)

“Stimulation of brain pleasure centers can eliminate feelings of rage, fear, and depression.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Before Ethics and Morality" (1972)

Ben Carson photo

“Everyone in the world worth being nice to. Because God never creates inferior human beings, each person deserves respect and dignity.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo

“Now, as the inferior animals were all in being before man, there was language upon earth long ere the history of our race commenced.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 311
Context: Now, as the inferior animals were all in being before man, there was language upon earth long ere the history of our race commenced. The only additional fact in the history of language, which was produced by our creation, was the rise of a new mode of expression—namely that by sound-signs produced by the vocal organs. In other words, speech was the only novelty in this respect attending the creation of the human race.

Related topics