Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 9

151. “Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

152. “The greatest superstition now entertained by public men is that hypocrisy is the royal road to success.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

153. “I have not the slightest confidence in ‘spiritual manifestations.’”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

154. “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

155. “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

156. “My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

157. “As long as a man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

158. “Do not trust those in whom the compulsion to punish is strong.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

159. “We have at last ascertained that miracles can be perfectly understood; that there is nothing mysterious about them; that they are simply transparent falsehoods.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

160. “If there be an infinite Being, he does not need our help – we need not waste our energies in his defense.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

161. “The ideas of right and wrong change with the experience of the race, and this change is wrought by the gradual ascertaining of consequences – of results.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

162. “They knew no better, but I do not propose to follow the example of a barbarian because he was honestly a barbarian.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

163. “As a 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

164. “Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

165. “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

166. “If we are immortal it is a fact in nature, and we are not indebted to priests for it, nor to bibles for it, and it cannot be destroyed by unbelief.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

167. “If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

168. “Nothing is so pleasing to these Gods as the butchery of unbelievers. Nothing so enrages them, even now, as to have some one deny their existence.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

169. “Not one of the orthodox ministers dare preach what he thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation think otherwise. He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is not expected to search after the truth, but that he is employed to defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

170. “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

171. “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

172. “If what is known as the Christian Religion is true, nothing can be more wonderful than the fact that Matthew, Mark and Luke say nothing about “salvation by faith;” that they do not even hint at the doctrine of the atonement, and are as silent as empty tombs as to the necessity of believing anything to secure happiness in this world or another.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

173. “In this connection we might ask how God can be moral or good unless he believes in some Being superior to himself?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

174. “That church teaches that infinite innocence was sacrificed for me! I do not want it! I do not wish to go to heaven unless I can settle by the books, and go there because I ought to go there. I have said, and I say again, I do not wish to be a charity angel. I have no ambition to become a winged pauper of the skies.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

175. “Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

176. “When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death – that is heroism.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

177. “The closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

178. “Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

179. “Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

180. “Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy a coffin.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

181. “If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish – if a little more enlightened, religion would perish.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

182. “It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

183. “Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

184. “Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

185. “In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

186. “Strange but true: those who have loved God most have loved men least.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

187. “The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

188. “If I had my way I’d make health catching instead of disease.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

189. “A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, infamous and hideous-such is the God of the Pentateuch.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

190. “In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

191. “Justice, poised and balanced in eternal calm, will shake from the golden scales in which are weighed the acts of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste: No race, no color, no previous condition, can change the rights of men.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

192. “This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

193. “All religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. Shakespeare is my bible, Burns my hymn-book.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

194. “We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living-Hope for the dead.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

195. “With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

196. “A mortgage casts a shadow on the sunniest field.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

197. “There is no slavery but ignorance.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

198. “Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country, and the maligners of his honor.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

199. “They knew that it was necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

200. “The triumph of justice is the only peace.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll