Robert Green Ingersoll
Robert Green Ingersoll
Robert Green "Bob" Ingersollwas an American lawyer, a Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator of the United States during the Golden Age of Free Thought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism. He was nicknamed "The Great Agnostic"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth11 August 1833
CountryUnited States of America
estimate greater lowest man meanest men thinks wife
I find that in this day and generation, the meanest men have the lowest estimate of woman; that the greater the man is, the grander he is, the more he thinks of mother, wife and daughter.
axe change common cowardly meanest perjury
Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner.
mean thinking intellectual
By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think and the right to think wrong.
ignorance mean men
Crimes were committed to punish crimes, and crimes were committed to prevent crimes. The world has been filled with prisons and dungeons, with chains and whips, with crosses and gibbets, with thumbscrews and racks, with hangmen and heads-men — and yet these frightful means and instrumentalities have committed far more crimes than they have prevented.... Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime. As long as dishonorable success outranks honest effort — as long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails.
mean rights government
The emblem of equal rights. It means free hands, free lips, self- government, and the sovereignty of the individual.
mean men world
The history of the world shows that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was done, man did it.
mean thinking intellectual
Intellectual liberty [is] the right to think right and the right to think wrong. Thought is the means by which we endeavor to arrive at truth.
belong filled four nor religion thousand wherever
You need not go back four thousand years for heroines. The world is filled with them today. They do not belong to any nation, nor to any religion, nor exclusively to any race. Wherever woman is found, they are found.
change men physically
You have to change men physically before you change them intellectually.
dreary elevates happiness loves shop whether whoever works
Whoever labors for the happiness of those he loves elevates himself, no matter whether he works in the dreary shop or the perfumed field.
human lower sympathy
What is it that distinguishes you and me from the lower animals - from the beasts? More, I say, than anything else, human sympathy - human sympathy.
art builds defended fills home love passion purity sacredness walt whitman
Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song.
expense full giving ideas life prince subjects summer
Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his ideas upon all subjects at the expense of prince and king, was exiled to England.
cannot creed dogma freely permitted until
Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book and creed and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free.