| It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Education] |
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| Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Music] |
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| In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Perspective] |
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| Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Conformity] |
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| Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Conformity] |
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| The destroyer of weeds, thistles and thorns is a benefactor, whether he soweth grain or not. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Helping] |
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| 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. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Justice] |
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| Every crime is born of necessity. If you want less crime, you must change the conditions. Poverty makes crime. Want, rags, crusts, misfortune - all these awake the wild beast in man, and finally he takes, and takes contrary to law, and becomes a criminal. And what do you do with him? You punish him. Why not punish a man for having consumption? The time will come when you will see that that is just as logical. What do you do with the criminal? You send him to the penitentiary. Is he made better? Worse. The first thing you do is to try to trample out his manhood, by putting an indignity upon him. You mark him. You put him in stripes. At night you put him in darkness. His feeling for revenge grows. You make a wild beast of him, and he comes out of that place branded in body and soul, and then you won't let him reform if he wants to. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Justice] |
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| He loves his country best who strives to make it best. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Patriotism] |
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| If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Religion] |
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| Don't you know that if people could bottle the air they would? Don't you know that there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath, if they could not pay for air? I am not blaming anybody. I am just telling how it is. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Property] |
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| Few rich men own their property; the property owns them. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Property] |
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| Learn to love good books. There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Money] |
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| A place where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [College] |
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| Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Anger] |
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| There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Equality] |
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| In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Society] |
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| If I had my way I'd make health catching instead of disease. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Health] |
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| Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Hope] |
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| Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity. |
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- Robert Greene Ingersoll |
more quotations on [Hope] |
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