Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “We rise by lifting others.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Featured in: Helping Others Quotes, Helping Quotes

2. “A good deed is the best prayer.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

3. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— 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. “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

11. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

14. “All religion is slavery.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

17. “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

18. “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

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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

29. “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

30. “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

31. “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

32. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

34. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

40. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

46. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

48. “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

49. “Too much doubt is better than too much credulity.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll