Quotes by Orators - Page 7

Deceive not thy physician confessor nor lawyer.
George Herbert
Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.
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
Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,Guiltie of dust and sin.
George Herbert
The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.
Robert G. Ingersoll
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass
A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.
Daniel Webster
When I want to find the vanguard of the people I look to the uneasy dreams of an aristocracy and find what they dread most.
Wendell Phillips
What is valuable is not new and what is new is not valuable.
Daniel Webster
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work.
Frederick Douglass
A disordered currency is one of the greatest political evils.
Daniel Webster
Not one word was said by Moses or Aaron as to the wickedness of depriving a human being of his liberty. Not a word was said in favor of liberty. Not the slightest intimation that a human being was justly entitled to the product of his own labor. Not a word about the cruelty of masters who would destroy even the babes of slave mothers. It seems to me wonderful that this God did not tell the king of Egypt that no nation could enslave another, without also enslaving itself; that it was impossible to put a chain around the limbs of a slave, without putting manacles upon the brain of the master. Why did he not tell him that a nation founded upon slavery could not stand? Instead of declaring these things, instead of appealing to justice, to mercy and to liberty, he resorted to feats of jugglery. Suppose we wished to make a treaty with a barbarous nation, and the president should employ a sleight-of-hand performer as envoy extraordinary, and instruct him, that when he came into the presence of the savage monarch, he should cast down an umbrella or a walking stick, which would change into a lizard or a turtle; what would we think? Would we not regard such a performance as beneath the dignity even of a president? And what would be our feelings if the savage king sent for his sorcerers and had them perform the same feat? If such things would appear puerile and foolish in the president of a great republic, what shall be said when they were resorted to by the creator of all worlds? How small, how contemptible such a God appears!
Robert G. Ingersoll
The first objection to Darwinism is that it is only a guess and was never anything more. It is called a 'hypothesis,' but the word 'hypothesis,' though euphonious, dignified and high-sounding, is merely a scientific synonym for the old-fashioned word 'guess.' If Darwin had advanced his views as a guess they would not have survived for a year, but they have floated for half a century, buoyed up by the inflated word 'hypothesis.' When it is understood that “hypothesis” means 'guess,' people will inspect it more carefully before accepting it.
William Jennings Bryan
I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes, - a justifier of the most appalling barbarity, - a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds, - and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of the slaveholders find the strongest protection. Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
Frederick Douglass
I am not a Virginian but an American.
Patrick Henry
Character is power.
Booker T. Washington
At this moment, I saw more clearly than ever the brutalizing effects of slavery upon the slave and slaveholder.
Frederick Douglass
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
If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.
Robert G. Ingersoll
And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?
Robert G. Ingersoll
As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body but can never be so in mind.
Cicero
One laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still.
Robert G. Ingersoll
[A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence.
Frederick Douglass
Freedom is a possession of inestimable value.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
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
It is only liquid currents of thought that move men and the world.
Wendell Phillips
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles he has overcome trying to succeed.
Booker T. Washington
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
I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But I should be false to the earlierst sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace; and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom. This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise.
Frederick Douglass
Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.
Robert G. Ingersoll
To the sick while there is life there is hope.
Cicero
Skill and confidence are an uncon-quered army.
George Herbert
I swear that while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and to augment the liberties of man, woman, and
Robert G. Ingersoll
No man was ever great without a touch of divine afflatus.
Cicero
Reason is the mistress and queen of all things.
Cicero
Those who are happiest are those who do the most for others.
Booker T. Washington
To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.
Robert G. Ingersoll
What an ugly beast is the ape, and how like us.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Every moderate drinker could abandon the intoxicating cup if he would every inebriate would if he could.
J. B. Gough
There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.
Cicero
I have observed this in my experience of slavery, - that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom. I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right; and he can be brought to that only when he ceased to be a man.
Frederick Douglass
Politics is but the common pulsebeat of which revolution is the feverspasm.
Wendell Phillips
There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences.
Robert G. Ingersoll
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 wrong.
Robert G. Ingersoll
To cheapen the lives of any group of men, cheapens the lives of all men, even our own. This is a law of human psychology, or human nature. And it will not be repealed by our wishes, nor will it be merciful to our blindness.
William Pickens
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
If there is no struggle there is no progress.
Frederick Douglass
The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.
Patrick Henry
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,The bridal of the earth and sky;The dew shall weep thy fall tonight,For thou must die.
George Herbert
Grandmother pointed out my brother Perry, my sister Sarah, and my sister Eliza, who stood in the group. I had never seen my brother nor my sisters before; and, though I had sometimes heard of them, and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what they were to me, or I to them. We were brothers and sisters, but what of that? Why should they be attached to me, or I to them? Brothers and sisters were by blood; but slavery had made us strangers. I heard the words brother and sisters, and knew they must mean something; but slavery had robbed these terms of their true meaning.
Frederick Douglass
My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!
Frederick Douglass
Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryan
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
Robert G. Ingersoll
There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.
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
There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
Frederick Douglass
A liar is not believed even though he tell the truth.
Cicero
He [Alexander von Humboldt] was to science what Shakespeare was to the drama.
Robert G. Ingersoll
It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.
Cicero