Skip to content
quotesby

In the old times of which I have spoken, they desired to make all men think exactly alike. All the mechanical ingenuity of the world cannot make two clocks run exactly alike, and how are you going to make hundreds of millions of people, differing in brain and disposition, in education and aspiration, in conditions and surroundings, each clad in a living robe of passionate flesh - how are you going to make them think and feel alike? If there is an infinite god, one who made us, and wishes us to think alike, why did he give a spoonful of brains to one, and a magnificent intellectual development to another? Why is it that we have all degrees of intelligence, from orthodoxy to genius, if it was intended that all should think and feel alike?

Robert G. Ingersoll#42

ThinkingHumanityHuman natureIndividualityDiversityIntelligence

About this quote

What does it mean?
Uniformity in thought is impossible and unnatural given the vast differences in human brains and circumstances.
In plain terms
People are too different to think exactly alike.
What can you take from it?
Accept diversity in human thought and development.

Where it applies

  • philosophical debates
  • social planning
  • education systems

Putting it to work

  • respect different viewpoints
  • avoid enforcing conformity

Questions to consider

  • Why do you think people differ so much?
  • Is uniformity ever desirable?

Another view

Some groups value shared norms over individual diversity for cohesion.

More from Robert G. Ingersoll

  1. You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture; nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these, and what you have done. You ca…

    Permalink to quote #41
  2. There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken - until dungeons …

    Permalink to quote #43
  3. The good men, the good women, are tired of the whip and lash in the realm of thought. They remember the chain and fagot with a shudder. They are free, and they…

    Permalink to quote #40

Related quotes

  1. Imagination, not intelligence, made us human.

    Terry PratchettTerry Pratchett quote #7
  2. There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.

    Michel de MontaigneMichel de Montaigne quote #37
  3. Men are born equal but they are also born different.

    Erich FrommErich Fromm quote #84