Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

102. “Death is only perfect rest.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

103. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

105. “Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

107. “And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

108. “Age after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and nowhere, in all the annals of mankind, has any god succored the oppressed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

109. “The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

110. “And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

111. “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

112. “It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

113. “A man is not moral because he is obedient through fear or ignorance. Morality lives in the realm of perceived obligation...”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

114. “If there is one subject in this world worthy of being discussed, worthy of being understood, it is the question of intellectual liberty. Without that, we are simply painted clay.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

115. “Great virtues may draw attention from defects, they cannot sanctify them. A pebble surrounded by diamonds remains a common stone, and a diamond surrounded by pebbles is still a gem.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

116. “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

117. “To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

118. “The meanest hut with love in it is a palace fit for the gods, and a palace without love is a den only fit for wild beasts.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

119. “I would rather live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody but men.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

120. “If there is a God, there should be no slaves.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

121. “One laugh of a child will make the holiest day more sacred still.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

122. “The Declaration of Independence was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

123. “Memory is the miser of the mind; forgetfulness the spendthrift.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

124. “As a matter of fact, no one knows that God exists and no one knows that God does not exist. To my mind there is no evidence that God exists – that this world is governed by a being of infinite goodness, wisdom and power, but I do not pretend to know.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

125. “To be like other people is to be unlike ourselves.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

126. “One man in the right will finally get to be a majority.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

127. “I cannot see why we should expect an infinite God to do better in another world than he does in this.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

128. “Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in god. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

129. “Spirituality for the most part is a mask worn by idleness, arrogance and greed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

130. “I do not believe in loving enemies; I have pretty hard work to love my friends. Neither do I believe in revenge. No man can afford to keep the viper of revenge in his heart. But I believe in justice, in self-defense.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

131. “No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

132. “My principal objections to orthodox religion are two: slavery here and hell hereafter.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

133. “If Jehovah cannot support his religion without going into partnership with a State Legislature, I think he ought to give it up.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

134. “Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

135. “The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, we are mental serfs.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

136. “After all, the real question is not whether the Bible is inspired, but whether it is true. If it is true, it does not need to be inspired. If it is true, it makes no difference whether it was written by a man or a god.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

137. “Darwin has done more to change human thought than all the priests who have existed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

138. “There is in all artists a little of the vagabond.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

139. “All the professors in all the religious colleges in this country rolled into one, would not equal Charles Darwin.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

140. “I never will, I never can, worship a God who upholds the institution of slavery. Such a God I hate and defy. I neither want his heaven, nor fear his hell.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

141. “Whoever increases the sum of human joy, is a worshiper. He who adds to the sum of human misery, is a blasphemer.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

142. “Fear is a dagger with which hypocrisy assassinates the soul.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

143. “Science has nothing in common with religion. Facts and miracles never did, and never will agree. They are not in the least related. They are deadly foes. What has religion to do with facts? Nothing. Can there be Methodist mathematics, Catholic astronomy, Presbyterian geology, Baptist biology, or Episcopal botany?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

144. “Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

145. “The priests of one religion never credit the miracles of another religion. Is this because priests instinctively know priests?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

146. “Only the very ignorant are perfectly satisfied that they know. To the common man the great problems are easy. He has no trouble in accounting for the universe. He can tell you the origin and destiny of man and the why and wherefore of things.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

147. “It has always seemed to me that a being coming from another world, with a message of infinite importance to mankind, should at least have verified that message by his own signature. Is it not wonderful that not one word was written by Christ?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

148. “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.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

149. “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

150. “Religion has not civilized man – man has civilized religion. God improves as man advances.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll