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Robert Green Ingersoll

~ Gems from the Great Agnostic

Robert Green Ingersoll

Monthly Archives: April 2015

I believe that nearly all that has been done in this world has been honestly done.

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by RGI in Trial of C.B. Reynolds For Blashphemy

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Christianity, Hell, Nature, Religion, Superstition

I believe that the poor savage who kneels down and prays to a stuffed snake – prays that his little children may recover from the fever – is honest, and it seems to me that a good God would answer his prayer if he could, if it was in accordance with wisdom, because the poor savage was doing the best he could, and no one can do any better than that. So I believe that the Presbyterians who used to think that nearly everybody was going to hell, said exactly what they believed. They were honest about it, and I would not send one of them to jail – would never think of such a thing – even if he called the unbelievers of the world “wretches,” “dogs,” and “devils.” What would I do? I would simply answer him – that is all; answer him kindly. I might laugh at him a little, but I would answer him in kindness.

So these divisions of the human mind are natural. They are a necessity. Do you know that all the mechanics that ever lived – take the best ones – cannot make two clocks that will run exactly alike one hour, one minute? They cannot make two pendulums that will beat in exactly the same time, one beat. If you cannot do that, how are you going to make hundreds, thousands, billions of people, each with a different quality and quantity of brain, each clad in a robe of living, quivering flesh, and each driven by passion’s storm over the wild sea of life – how are you going to make them all think alike? This is the impossible thing that Christian ignorance and bigotry and malice have been trying to do.

– RGI

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For my part, I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions.

28 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by RGI in Trial of C.B. Reynolds For Blashphemy

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Intelligence, Liberty, Nature, Religion, Tyranny

Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.

I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips – to make the tongue a convict. I passionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the children of the brain. A man has a right to work with his hands, to plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who take these rights from their fellow-men.

If you have the right to work with your hands and to gather the harvest for yourself and your children, have you not a right to cultivate your brain? Have you not the right to read, to observe, to investigate – and when you have so read and so investigated, have you not the right to reap that field? And what is it to reap that field? It is simply to express what you have ascertained – simply to give your thoughts to your fellow-men.

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; without that, we are poor, miserable serfs and slaves. If you have not the right to express your opinions, then no man ever walked beneath the blue of heaven that had the right to express his thought. If others claim the right, where did they get it? How did they happen to have it, and how did you happen to be deprived of it? Where did a church or a nation get that right? Are we not all children of the same Mother? Are we not all compelled to think, whether we wish to or not?

Can you help thinking as you do? When you look out upon the woods, the fields – when you look at the solemn splendors of the night – these things produce certain thoughts in your mind, and they produce them necessarily. No man can think as he desires. No man controls the action of his brain, any more than he controls the action of his heart. The blood pursues its old accustomed ways in spite of you. The eyes see, if you open them, in spite of you. The ears hear, if they are unstopped, without asking your permission. And the brain thinks in spite of you. Should you express that thought? Certainly you should, if others express theirs. You have exactly the same right. He who takes it from you is a robber.

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.

– RGI

Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color.

26 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by RGI in Address on the Civil Rights Act

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Charity, Class, Compassion, Equality, Justice, Labor, Liberty, Love

The man who hates the black man because he is black, has the same spirit as he who hates the poor man because he is poor. It is the spirit of caste. The proud useless despises the honest useful. The parasite idleness scorns the great oak of labor on which it feeds, and that lifts it to the light. I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. They are superior who have the best heart – the best brain. Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty. 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.

– RGI

My sympathies are with the men and women who work.

23 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by RGI in The Chicago and New York Gold Speech

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Class, Greed, Labor

I know that labor is the Atlas on whose shoulders rests the great superstructure of civilization and the great dome of science adorned with all there is of art. Labor is the great oak, labor is the great column, and labor, with its deft and cunning hands, has created the countless things of art and beauty. I want to see labor paid. I want to see capital civilized until it will be willing to give labor its share.

– RGI

I love this country because the people are free; and if they are not free it is their own fault.

21 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by RGI in The Chicago and New York Gold Speech

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Government, Law, Liberty

The legally expressed will of the majority is the supreme law of the land. We are responsible for what our Government does. We cannot excuse ourselves because of the act of some king, or the opinions of nobles. We are the kings. We are the nobles. We are the aristocracy of America, and when our Government does right we are honored, and when our Government does wrong the brand of shame is on the American brow.

– RGI

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