Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

53. “If the Bible and my brain are both the work of the same infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

54. “If a man wishes to have God recognized in the constitution of our country, let him read the history of the Inquisition, and let him remember that hundreds of millions of men, women, and children have been sacrificed to placate the wrath, or win the approbation of this god.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

55. “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

56. “Fear is religion, courage is science.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

57. “Science built the Academy, superstition the Inquisition.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

58. “Intelligence is the only moral guide.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

59. “Superstition is the child of ignorance and fear.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

60. “I would rather smoke one cigar than hear two sermons.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

61. “One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

62. “Every man who expresses an honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

63. “By nature all people are alike, but by education become different.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

64. “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

65. “Every cradle asks us, Whence? and every coffin, Whither? The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

66. “Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

67. “But honest men do not pretend to know; they are candid and sincere; they love the truth; they admit their ignorance, and they say, We do not know.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

68. “Every library is an arsenal.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

69. “Every child should be taught that useful work is worship and that intelligent labor is the highest form of prayer.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

70. “This is my creed: Happiness is the only good; reason the only torch; justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

71. “There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women – of free mothers.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

72. “Secularism is a religion, a religion that is understood. It has no mysteries, no mumblings, no priests, no ceremonies, no falsehoods, no miracles, and no persecutions.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

73. “We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

74. “Temptations are as thick as the leaves of the forest, and no one can be out of the reach of temptation unless he is dead. The great thing is to make people intelligent enough and strong enough, not to keep away from temptation, but to resist it.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

76. “Nothing discloses character like the use of power.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

77. “In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

78. “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

79. “To the wise man, to the wise nation, the mistakes of the past are the torches of the present.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

80. “God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

81. “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. To account for anything by supernatural agencies is, in fact to say that we do not know. Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

82. “The most important thing in this world is liberty. More important than food or clothes – more important than gold or houses or lands – more important than art or science – more important than all religions, is the liberty of man.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

83. “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

84. “The savage prays to a stone that he calls a god, while the Christian prays to a god he calls a spirit, and the prayers of both are equally useful.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

85. “Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called ‘natural’ man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

87. “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

88. “The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

89. “Everyone should be taught the nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

90. “All I have to say is, Love one another – that is the height of all philosophy. It is beyond all religions. It is the secret of joy – the fountain of Perpetual Youth – the only rainbow on life’s dark cloud.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

91. “If I go to heaven I want to take my reason with me.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

92. “The history of the world shows that when a mean thing was done, man did it; when a good thing was done, man did it.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

93. “Nothing could be more idiotic and absurd than the doctrine of the trinity.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

94. “Why should we postpone our joy to another world? Let us get all we can of the good between the cradle and the grave, all that we can of the truly dramatic. If, when death comes, that is the end, we have at least made the best of this life.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

95. “Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

96. “This, in my judgment, is the highest philosophy: First, do not regret having lost yesterday; second, do not fear that you will lose tomorrow; third, enjoy today.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

97. “Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, “Halt!” A creed is the ignorant Past bulling the enlightened Present.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

98. “Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll