Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We rise by lifting others.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Featured in: Positivity Quotes, Care Quotes, Short Inspirational Quotes, Positive Short Quotes, Helping Others Quotes

2. “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 G. Ingersoll

3. “A good deed is the best prayer.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

4. “In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

5. “Commerce is the great civilizer. We exchange ideas when we exchange fabrics.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

6. “The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

7. “Courage without conscience is a wild beast.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Featured in: Integrity Quotes

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

10. “Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Featured in: Leadership Quotes

11. “Religion supports nobody. It has to be supported. It produces no wheat, no corn; it ploughs no land; it fells no forests. It is a perpetual mendicant. It lives on the labors of others, and then has the arrogance to pretend that it supports the giver.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

12. “He loves his country best who strives to make it best.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

13. “Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

14. “A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

15. “The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

16. “All religion is slavery.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

17. “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 G. Ingersoll

18. “A mule has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

19. “The myth of hell represents all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

20. “I would rather be a beggar and spend my money like a king, than be a king and spend money like a beggar.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

22. “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

23. “Meekness is the mask of malice.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

25. “Commerce is the great civilizer.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

26. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

28. “All religious systems enslave the mind. Certain things are demanded-certain things must be believed-certain things must be done-and the man who becomes the subject or servant of this superstition must give up all idea of indivuality or hope of intellectual growth or progress.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

29. “Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers: It is the only prayer that deserves an answer – good, honest, noble work.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

30. “The way to be happy is to make others so.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

31. “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

32. “Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

33. “Above all things, one should maintain his self-respect, and there is but one way to do that, and that is to live in accordance with your highest ideal.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

34. “Blasphemy is what an old dogma screams at a new truth.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

35. “Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

37. “Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

39. “The more false we destroy, the more room there will be for the true.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

40. “In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

41. “Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of progress, the enemy of education and the assassin of freedom.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

42. “The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

43. “An infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

44. “With soap, baptism is a good thing.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

45. “Character survives; goodness lives; love is immortal.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

46. “Injustice upon earth renders the justice of of heaven impossible.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

47. “The God of hell should be held in loathing, contempt and scorn. A god who threatens eternal pain should be hated, not loved; cursed, not worshipped. A heaven presided over by such a god must be below the meanest hell.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

48. “Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

49. “The Church says the Earth is flat. But I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the Moon. And I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

50. “There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: “Let us be friends.””

— Robert G. Ingersoll