Quotes by Orators - Page 2

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Greatness consists not in the holding of some future office, but really consists in doing great deeds with little means and the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private rants of life. To be great at all one must be great here, now, in Philadelphia.

Russell H. Conwell

O temporal O mores! O what times! what morals!

Cicero

Our government, conceived in liberty and purchased with blood, can be preserved only by constant vigilance. May we guard it as our children's richest legacy, for what shall it profit our nation if it shall gain the whole world and lose “the spirit that prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere”?

William Jennings Bryan

No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Christianity is a battle not a dream

Wendell Phillips

I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate.

Frederick Douglass

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

Marcus Tullius Cicero

There's nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter and the love of friends.

Hilaire Belloc

I never admired another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

Cicero

An effort was made to spread this new materialist atheism with its Communist consequence "by the sword" (as the metaphor goes), that is, by the invasion of neighboring countries with consequent further massacres and the extension of the area of despotic Soviet control... This armed attempt at expansion was checked by Catholic Poland, the most immediately exposed victim, in what has been called "one of the decisive battles of the world.

Hilaire Belloc

They suppress the truth rather than take the consequence of telling it, and in so doing prove themselves a part of the human family.

Frederick Douglass

The chicken is the country's but the city eats it.

George Herbert

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

No one could ever meet death for his country without the hope of immortality.

Cicero

For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

The mechanic, when a wheel refuses to turn, never thinks of dropping on his knees and asking the assistance of some divine power. He knows there is a reason. He knows that something is too large or too small; that there is something wrong with his machine; and he goes to work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or there, until the wheel will turn.

Robert G. Ingersoll

When I speak of God, I mean that god who prevented man from putting forth his hand and taking also of the fruit of the tree of life that he might live forever; of that god who multiplied the agonies of woman, increased the weary toil of man, and in his anger drowned a world—of that god whose altars reeked with human blood, who butchered babes, violated maidens, enslaved men and filled the earth with cruelty and crime; of that god who made heaven for the few, hell for the many, and who will gloat forever and ever upon the writhings of the lost and damned.

Robert G. Ingersoll

I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.

Robert G. Ingersoll

My creed is that: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Right is of no sex, Truth is of no color, God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren

Frederick Douglass

Whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous.

Robert G. Ingersoll

As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delights of presence best known by the torments of absence.

Alcibiades

There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences.

Robert G. Ingersoll

The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Old age is by nature rather talkative.

Cicero

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Physicians of the Utmost Fame were called at once but when they came they answered as they took their fees 'There is no cure for this disease.'

Hilaire Belloc

The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here.

Robert G. Ingersoll

When people speak of great men, they think of men like Napoleon - men of violence. Rarely do they think of peaceful men. But contrast the reception they will receive when they return home from their battles. Napoleon will arrive in pomp and in power, a man who's achieved the very summit of earthly ambition. And yet his dreams will be haunted by the oppressions of war. William Wilberforce, however, will return to his family, lay his head on his pillow and remember: the slave trade is no more.

Charles Fox

Revolutions are not made they come.

Wendell Phillips

It is only liquid currents of thought that move men and the world.

Wendell Phillips

To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings, must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not depend upon mere force; the slave must know no Higher Law than his master's will. The whole relationship must not only demonstrate, to his mind, its necessity, but its absolute rightfulness.

Frederick Douglass

With soap baptism is a good thing.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Power is ever stealing from the many to the few.

Wendell Phillips

It has always been a mystery to me how Adam, Eve, and the serpent were taught the same language. Where did they get it? We know now, that it requires a great number of years to form a language; that it is of exceedingly slow growth. We also know that by language, man conveys to his fellows the impressions made upon him by what he sees, hears, smells and touches. We know that the language of the savage consists of a few sounds, capable of expressing only a few ideas or states of the mind, such as love, desire, fear, hatred, aversion and contempt. Many centuries are required to produce a language capable of expressing complex ideas. It does not seem to me that ideas can be manufactured by a deity and put in the brain of man. These ideas must be the result of observation and experience.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.

Robert G. Ingersoll

If you want to succeed in the world you must make your own opportunities.

John B. Gough

We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe encompasses us. What does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the truth? Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret.

Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

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