Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

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

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.

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

Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.

As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.

Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.

To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.

The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.

One laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still.

It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.

Injustice upon earth renders the justice of of heaven impossible.

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.

No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me.

Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter.

With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.

And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?

Nothing but truth is immortal.

Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.

There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.

He [Alexander von Humboldt] was to science what Shakespeare was to the drama.

Happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.

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

In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.

My creed is that: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.

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

I suppose it can be truthfully said that hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.

Not one of the learned gentlemen who pretend that the Mosaic laws are filled with justice and intelligence, would live, for a moment, in any country where such laws were in force.

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.

The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here.

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

In nature there are neither rewards or punishments-there are consequences.

With soap baptism is a good thing.

Reason observation and experience - the Holy Trinity of Science.

The present is the necessary product of all the past the necessary cause of all the future.

Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the glare of

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart — the best brain.

The religionist is a living fossil, embedded in that rock called faith.

The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn. The less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything...

This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.

There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences.

This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.

Theology is a superstition—Humanity a religion.

When you go home you ought to go like a ray of light—so that it will, even in the night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness.

Brain without heart is far more dangerous than heart withoutbrain.

Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man.

With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate every form of tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty.

I swear that while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and to augment the liberties of man, woman, and