Top 125 Robert Green Ingersoll Quotes

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

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

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

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.

He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success or the fear of failure – who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only victor.

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

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

All the punishment in the world will not reform a man, unless he knows that he who inflicts it upon him does it for the sake of reformation, and really and truly loves him, and has his good at heart. Punishment inflicted for gratifying the appetite makes man afraid but debases him.

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

The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue – or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes.

You need not go back four thousand years for heroines. The world is filled with them today. They do not belong to any nation, nor to any religion, nor exclusively to any race. Wherever woman is found, they are found.

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

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.

Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power.

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

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.

Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book and creed and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free.

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.

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.

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 can make hypocrites by the million.

Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his ideas upon all subjects at the expense of prince and king, was exiled to England.

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.

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

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.

Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner.

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

The Catholics of Maryland were the first people on the new continent to declare universal religious toleration. Let this be remembered to their eternal honor.

Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to put his characters in a position where it was right to do wrong.

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.

A prayer that must have a cannon behind it better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. Love need not carry knives and revolvers.

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

The doctrine of immortality rests upon human affection. We love; therefore, we wish to live.

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

The American people do not like neutrality. They would rather a man were on the wrong side than on neither.

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

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.

Our fathers worshiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an American now is, he worships the gold of the calf.

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

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

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

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

Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner.

All the men of wealth should remember that everybody in a community has got, in some way, to be supported. I want to see them so that they can support themselves by their own labor.

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

Every good government is made up of good families. The unit of good government is the family, and anything that tends to destroy the family is perfectly devilish and infamous.

Science has nothing in common with religion. Facts and miracles never did and never will agree.

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.

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

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

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.

Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to protect the rights of man, I am a rebel. Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to give man liberty, to clothe him in all his just rights, I am on the side of that rebellion.

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.

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.

Happiness is not a reward – it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment – it is a result.

In order to appreciate a great man, we must know his surroundings. We must understand the scope of the drama in which he played – the part he acted – and we must also know his audience.

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

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.

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

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

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

The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose the character of nations, the ideals of the human race.

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

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