Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 6 of 9

251. “I read the other day an account of a meeting between John Knox and John Calvin. Imagine a dialogue between a pestilence and a famine!”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

252. “The rights of men and women should be equal and sacred-marriage should be a perfect partnership.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

253. “Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

254. “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

255. “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

256. “Logic is not satisfied with assertion. It cares nothing for the opinions of the great; nothing for the prejudices of the many, and least of all for the superstitions of the dead.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

257. “Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he should have used it.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

258. “The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

259. “There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

260. “Today the intelligence of the world denies the miraculous. Ignorance is the soil of the supernatural. The foundation of Christianity has crumbled, has disappeared, and the entire fabric must fall. The natural is true. The miraculous is false.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

261. “The man who finds a truth lights a torch.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

262. “Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

263. “I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

264. “It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

265. “If nobody has too much, everybody will have enough.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

266. “On every hand there seems to be design to defeat design. If God created man – if he is the father of us all, why did he make the criminals, the insane, the deformed and idiotic? Should the mother, who clasps to her breast an idiot child, thank God?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

267. “If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

268. “Logic is the necessary product of intelligence and sincerity. It cannot be learned. It is the child of a clear head and a good heart.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

269. “I hate above all things a cross man. What right has he to murder the sunshine of a day? What right has he to assassinate the Joy of life? When you go home, you ought to go like a ray of light-so that it will, even in the night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

270. “Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

271. “The Old Testament filled this world with tyranny and injustice, and the New gives us a future filled with pain for nearly all of the sons of men. The Old Testament describes the hell of the past, and the New the hell of the future.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

272. “It will probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. 1879.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

273. “As long as every question is answered by the word “God,” scientific inquiry is simply impossible.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

274. “Love your friends and be just to your enemies.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

275. “No God can put a man in hell in another world, who has made a little heaven in this. God cannot make a man miserable if that man has made somebody else happy.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

276. “The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called faith.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

277. “Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world, and love is the only thing that will pay ten percent to both borrower and lender.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

278. “Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrines of the weak.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

279. “If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn’t pay Smith.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

280. “Many people think they have religion when they are troubled with dyspepsia.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

281. “The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

282. “I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

283. “Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

284. “I am not so much for the freedom of religion as I am for the religion of freedom.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

285. “An honest God is the noblest work of man.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

286. “Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason, that if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

287. “Either god should have written a book to fit my brain, or he should have made my brain to fit his book.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

288. “They say: Belief is important. I say: No, actions are important. Judge by deed, not by creed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

289. “One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

290. “Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? Yes, we all know it. That is the time all religions tell the truth – each of the other.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

291. “The object of all education should be to increase the usefulness of man – usefulness to himself and others.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

292. “Love is natural. Back of allceremony burns and will forever burn the sacred flame. There has been no time in the world’s history when that torch was extinguished. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, there has been true, pure, and unselfish love.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

293. “All prayers die in the air which they uselessly agitate.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

294. “To me, the most obscene word in our language is celibacy.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

295. “He who treats his friends and enemies alike, has neither love nor justice.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

296. “God cannot send to eternal pain a man who has done something toward improving the condition of his fellow-man. If he can, I had rather go to hell than to heaven and keep company with such a god.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

297. “Catholicism is contrary to human liberty. Catholicism bases salvation upon belief. Catholicism teaches man to trample his reason under foot. And for that reason it is wrong.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

298. “Reason is the light, the sun of the brain. It is the compass of the mind, the ever-constant Northern Star, the mountain peak that lifts itself above all clouds.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

299. “Every flower about a house certifies to the refinement of somebody. Every vine climbing and blossoming tells of love and joy.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

300. “Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll