Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Nothing is greater than to break the chains from the bodies of men – nothing nobler than to destroy the phantom of the soul.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

202. “In a world of cruelty, sympathy is a crime, and in a world of lies, truth is blasphemy.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

203. “There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

204. “If the property belongs to God he is able to pay the tax.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

205. “Fear paints pictures of ghosts and hangs them in the gallery of ignorance.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

206. “A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

207. “The Christians say, that among the ancient Jews, if you committed a crime you had to kill a sheep. Now they say ‘charge it.’ ‘Put it on the slate.’ The Savior will pay it. In this way, rascality is sold on credit, and the credit system in morals, as in business, breeds extravagance.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

208. “I am going to put the Bible out of business.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

209. “If there be gods we cannot help them, but we can assist our fellow men. We cannot love the inconceivable, but we can love wife and child and friend.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

210. “In the presence of death I affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world. I would say that much on the subject with my last breath.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

211. “The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

212. “What light is to the eyes – what air is to the lungs – what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

213. “There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, east a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

214. “Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

215. “If we are immortal, it is a fact of nature, and that fact does not depend on bibles, on Christs, priest, or creeds.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

216. “I am anxious to give away information, for it is only by giving it away that you can keep it. When you have told it, you remember it. It is with information as it is with liberty, the only way to be dead sure of it is to give it to other people.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

217. “The undressed is vulgar; the nude is pure, and the well-dressed tainted.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

218. “We must remember that we have to make judges out of men, and that by being made judges their prejudices are not diminished and their intelligence is not increased.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

219. “It is told that the great Angelo, in decorating a church, painted some angels wearing sandals. A cardinal looking at the picture said to the artist: Whoever saw angels with sandals? Angelo answered with another question: Whoever saw an angel barefooted?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

220. “The man who invented the telescope found out more about heaven than the closed eyes of prayer ever discovered.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

221. “The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead, and every sweet unselfish act is now a perfumed flower.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

222. “Nothing but truth is immortal.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

223. “There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

224. “Few rich men own their property; their property owns them.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

225. “The combined wisdom and genius of all mankind cannot possibly conceive of an argument against liberty of thought.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

226. “No man should kill himself as long as he can be of the least use to anybody, and if you cannot find some person that you are willing to do something for, find a good dog and take care of him. You have no idea how much better you will feel.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

227. “The old lady who said there must be a devil, else how could they make pictures that looked exactly like him, reasoned like a trained theologian – like a doctor of divinity.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

228. “It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good, and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

229. “Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God. While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

230. “For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

231. “The falling leaf that tells of autumn’s death is, in a subtler sense, a prophecy of spring.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

232. “There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

233. “There is only one way to be happy, and that is to make somebody else so, and you cannot be happy by going cross lots; you have got to go the regular turnpike road.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

234. “The careful reader of the New Testament will find three Christs described: – One who wished to preserve Judaism – one who wished to reform it, and one who built a system of his own.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

235. “It is incredible that only idiots are absolutely sure of salvation. It is incredible that the more brain you have the less your chance is. There can be no danger in honest thought, and if the world ever advances beyond what it is to-day, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

236. “Language is not subtle enough, tender enough, to express all that we feel; and when language fails, the highest and deepest longings are translated into music. Music is the sunshine – the climate – of the soul, and it floods the heart with a perfect June.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

237. “The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul, breaking the mental manacles, getting the brain out of bondage, giving courage to thought, filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

238. “Intellectual liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine of the mind, and without it, the world is a prison, the universe is a dungeon.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

239. “The good part of Christmas is not always Christian – it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, natural.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

240. “An infinite personality is an infinite impossibility.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

241. “I have had some trouble in regarding evil as having been intended by infinite Goodness.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

242. “If, with all the time at my disposal, with all the wealth of the resources of this vast universe, to do with as I will, I could not produce a better scheme of life than now prevails, I would be ashamed of my efforts and consider my work a humiliating failure.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

243. “Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

244. “I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart-the best brain.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

245. “Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

246. “Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an infinite being wants his praise!”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

247. “If we should put god in the Constitution there would be no room left for man.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

248. “Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

249. “The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

250. “I would not for my life destroy one star of human hope, but I want it so that when a poor woman rocks the cradle and sings a lullaby to the dimpled darling, she will not be compelled to believe that ninety-nine chances in a hundred she is raising kindling wood for hell.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll