Top 83 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes
#4. Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come to my grave and truthfully say: 'He who sleeps here never gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind word.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#6. 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.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#7. Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers: It is the only prayer that deserves an answer - good, honest, noble work.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#8. 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.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#9. Nobody ever saw anybody who had seen anybody who had heard of anybody that had ever seen anybody that had ever seen one of the original Hebrew manuscripts.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#10. I believe in the fireside. I believe in the democracy of home. I believe in the republicanism of the family. I believe in liberty, equality and love.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#11. In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#14. The ages of muscle and miracle - of fists and faith - are passing away.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#15. You have no idea how many men are spoiled by what is called education. For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. If Shakespeare had graduated at Oxford, he might have been a quibbling attorney, or a hypocritical parson.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#16. 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 ...
Robert G. Ingersoll
#17. I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#18. There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#19. I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night,
blown and flared by passion's storm,
and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#22. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#23. Whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#24. It is far cheaper to build schoolhouses than prisons, and it is much better to have scholars than convicts.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#25. As man develops, he places a greater value upon his own rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner thing. As he values his own rights, he begins to value the rights of others. And when all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#26. He bade the slave ships speed from coast to coast, Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#27. 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 G. Ingersoll
#28. I regard the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the same as I do most other ancient books, in which there is some truth, a great deal of error, considerable barbarism and a most plentiful lack of good sense.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#29. No one pretends that Shakespeare was (divinely) inspired, and yet all the writers of the books of the Old Testament put together, could not have produced Hamlet.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#30. 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, east a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#32. It certainly is no proof that a man is inspired simply because he is right.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#33. The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings. The men who burned their fellow-men for a moment, believed that God would burn his enemies forever.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#34. Christ never wrote a solitary word of the New Testament - not one word. There is an account that he once stooped and wrote something in the sand, but that has not been preserved. He never told anybody to write a word.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#35. Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#36. Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#38. Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God. While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#41. The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted , or even reasoned about , we are mental serfs.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#42. There is not the slightest danger of women becoming too intellectual or knowing too much. Neither is there any danger of men knowing too much. At least, I know of no men who are in immediate peril from that source.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#43. 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.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#44. The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellowmen.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#45. Suppose God should damn to everlasting fire a man so great and good, that he, looking from the abyss of hell, would forgive God, - how would a god feel then?
Robert G. Ingersoll
#46. But I will tell you what I say to my children: 'Go where you will; commit what crime you may; fall to what depth of degradation you may; you can never commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms, or my heart to you. As long as I live you shall have one sincere friend.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#47. Now and then some one says that the religion of his father and mother is good enough for him, and wonders why anybody should desire a better. Surely we are not bound to follow our parents in religion any more than in politics, science or art.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#48. Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#49. 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.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#50. As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#52. And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?
Robert G. Ingersoll
#53. Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!
Robert G. Ingersoll
#54. This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#56. 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.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#57. Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#58. Justice is the only worship.
Love is the only priest.
Ignorance is the only slavery.
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.
Wisdom is the science of happiness.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#59. 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?
Robert G. Ingersoll
#60. Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#62. If he was, in fact, God, he knew there was no such thing as death. He knew that what we called death was but the eternal opening of the golden gates of everlasting joy; and it took no heroism to face a death that was eternal life.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#63. There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#66. So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#67. He [Alexander von Humboldt] was to science what Shakespeare was to the drama.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#69. Logic is the necessary product of intelligence and sincerity. It cannot be learned. It is the child of a clear head and a good heart.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#70. Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#71. The religionist is a living fossil, embedded in that rock called faith.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#72. In the country you preserve your identity -- your personality. There you are an aggregation of atoms, but in the city you are only an atom of an aggregation.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#73. Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#74. The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul
breaking the mental manacles
getting the brain out of bondage
giving courage to thought
filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#75. The people were taught that the record was inspired, and therefore true. They were not taught that it was true, and therefore inspired.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#76. The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#77. Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#79. In all ages hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns on the heads of thieves, called kings.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#80. There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#81. I want to see a good miracle. I want to see a man with one
leg, and then I want to see the other leg grow out.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#82. They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest ... The dead do not suffer.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#83. As far as I am concerned I wish to be out on the high seas. I wish to take my chances with wind, and wave, and star. And I had rather go down in the glory and grandeur of the storm, than rot in any orthodox harbor.
Robert G. Ingersoll
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