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Quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll


The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, everyone should be serene, slow-pulsed and calm.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Few rich men own their property; their property owns them.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
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.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
The more liberty you give away the more you will have.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'
– Robert Green Ingersoll
The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
There is no slavery but ignorance.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
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.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.
– Robert Green Ingersoll
There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences.
– Robert Green Ingersoll