Robert Green Ingersoll Quotations

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.

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

They believed that every man should know how to read and how to write, and should find out all that his capacity allowed him to comprehend. That is the glory of the Puritan fathers.

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.

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.

I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.

There are times when a falsehood well told bridges over quite a difficulty, but in the long run, you had better tell the truth, even if you swim the creek.

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.

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.

Every religion in the world has denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that they all tell the truth - about others.

I concluded that all religions had the same foundation - a belief in the supernatural - a power above nature that man could influence by worship - by sacrifice and prayer.

The time to be happy is now, and the place to be happy is here.

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

Taste and love are not the servants of the will. Love is and must be free. It rises from the heart like perfume from a flower.

The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar - his life has been a success.

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.

I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber.

Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.

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.

A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy.

Nothing is more despicable than to reach fame by crawling, position by cringing.

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.

Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love's fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne.

The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words. They outlast all others.

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.

If there is any God, there is only one way to please him, and that is by a conscientious discharge of your obligations to your fellow men.

Fear, prejudice, malice, and the love of approbation bribe a thousand men where gold bribes one.

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.

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.

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.

Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne.

Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.

Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.

Neutrality is generally used as a mask to hide unusual bitterness. Sometimes it hides what it is - nothing. It always stands for hollowness of head or bitterness of heart, sometimes for both.

Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.

Every man should be the intellectual proprietor of himself, honest with himself, and intellectually hospitable; and upon every brain, reason should be enthroned as king.

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public.

The place does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king. Greatness is from within.

The truth is that all great men have had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.

Suspicion is only another form of cowardice. The man who suspects constantly suspects because he is afraid. Whenever you find a man with a free, frank, generous, brave nature, you will find that man without suspicion.

The more liberty you give away the more you will have.

I want to tell you this: you cannot get the robe of hypocrisy on you so thick that the sharp eye of childhood will not see through every veil.

I believe in living for this world - that's my doctrine - to make everybody happy that you can.

Let us account for all we see by the facts we know. If there are things for which we cannot account, let us wait for light. To account for anything by supernatural agencies is, in fact to say that we do not know. Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.

I say, let us think. Let each one express his thought. Let us become investigators, not followers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in Heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites.

So far as I am concerned, I think more of reasons than of reputations, more of principles than of persons, more of nature than of names, more of facts than of faiths.

There can be goodness without much intelligence - but it seems to me that perfect intelligence and perfect goodness must go together.

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.

Freedom has invented every useful machine, from the lowest to the highest, from the simplest to the most complex.

Voltaire lighted a torch and gave to others the sacred flame. The light still shines and will as long as man loves liberty and seeks for truth.

When you go home, fill the house with joy so that the light of it will stream out the windows and doors and illuminate even the darkness. It is just as easy that way as any in the world.

A good character, like a Gibraltar, will stand against the testimony of all the rascals in the universe, no matter how they assail it. It will stand, and it will stand firmer and grander the more it is assaulted.

Voltaire made up his mind to destroy the superstition of his time. He fought with every weapon that genius could devise or use. He was the greatest of all caricaturists, and he used this wonderful gift without mercy.

The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.

Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice.

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.

We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.

Few rich men own their property; their property owns them.

If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.

They who gain applause and power by pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices and passions of the multitude are the enemies of liberty.

No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.

If matter cannot be destroyed, cannot be annihilated, it could not have been created. The indestructible must be uncreatable.

A good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it yourself. Keep your word with your child the same as you would with your banker.

As long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power.

Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.

Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government - the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more.

Custom is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead.

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.

Freedom believes in education - the salvation of slavery is ignorance.

George Eliot tenderly carried in her heart the burdens of our race. She looked through pity's tears upon the faults and frailties of mankind.

Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world, and love is the only thing that will pay ten percent to both borrower and lender.

Happiness is the legal-tender of the soul. Joy is wealth.

He who does not want does not act.

How poor this world would be without its graves, without the memories of its mighty dead. Only the voiceless speak forever.

I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.

I hope there is another life, for I would like to see how things come out in this world when I am dead.

I think the man who eats the bread of idleness is under a certain obligation to speak well of labor.

In every age in which books have been produced, the governing class, the respectable, have been opposed to the works of real genius.

In spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God.

In the grave should be buried the prejudices and passions born of conflict. Charity should hold the scales in which are weighed the deeds of men.

It always has been and forever will be impossible for slavery or any kind or form of injustice to produce a great poet.

It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about.

Many Americans do not understand that the officers of the government are simply the servants of the people.

Most people are Democrats because they hate something; most people are Republicans because they love something.