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There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies rather than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents.
It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth, which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.

— William Winwood Reade The Martyrdom of Man (1872)

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More quotes by William Winwood Reade

If indeed there were a judgment-day, it would be for man to appear at the bar not as a criminal but as accuser.

The Martyrdom of Man (1872)

Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.

The Martyrdom of Man (1872)

A day will come when the European god of the nineteenth century will be classed with the gods of Olympus and the Nile.

The Martyrdom of Man (1872)

The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.

The Martyrdom of Man (1872)

What a state of society is this in which free-thinker is a term of abuse, and in which doubt is regarded as sin?

The Martyrdom of Man (1872)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Winwood Reade (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.