Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

304. “I have always noticed that the people who have the smallest souls make the most fuss about getting them saved.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

305. “It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

306. “I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

307. “The churches have no confidence in each other. Why? Because they are acquainted with each other.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

308. “Argument cannot be answered with insults. Kindness is strength; anger blows out the lamp of the mind.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

309. “I want no heaven for which I must give my reason; no happiness in exchange for my liberty, and no immortality that demands the surrender of my individuality. Better rot in the windowless tomb, to which there is no door but the red mouth of the pallid worm, than to wear the jeweled collar of a god.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

310. “We are not accountable for the sins of “Adam”.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

311. “When struck on one cheek to turn the other, is really joining a conspiracy to secure the triumph of brutality. To agree not to resist evil is to become an accomplice of all injustice.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

312. “Take the word Liberty from human speech and all the other words become poor, withered, meaningless sounds – but with that word realized – with that word understood, the world becomes a paradise.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

313. “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

314. “For thousands of years people have been trying to force other people to think their way. Did they succeed? No. Will they succeed? No. Why? Because brute force is not an argument.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

315. “The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a new truth.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

316. “The ministers, who preached at these revivals, were in earnest. They were zealous and sincere. They were not philosophers. To them science was the name of a vague dread – a dangerous enemy. They did not know much, but they believed a great deal.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

317. “I thank thee, Mother Nature, that thou hast put ingenuity enough in the brain of a child, when attacked by a brutal parent, to throw up a little breastwork in the shape of a lie.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

318. “If this religion is true, then there is only one Savior, only one narrow path to life. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other religion.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

319. “Every church that has a standard higher than human welfare is dangerous.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

320. “Lincoln never finished his education. To the night of his death he was a pupil, a learner, an inquirer, a seeker after knowledge. You have no idea how many men are spoiled by what is called education. For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. If Shakespeare had graduated at Oxford, he might.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

321. “Religion is one of the phases of thought through which the world is passing.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

322. “Laughing has always been considered by theologians as a crime.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

323. “There are some truths, however, that we should never forget: Superstition has always been the relentless enemy of science; faith has been a hater of demonstration; hypocrisy has been sincere only in its dread of truth, and all religions are inconsistent with mental freedom.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

324. “Only those who live on the labor of the ignorant are the enemies of science. Real love and real religion are in no danger from science. The more we know the safer all good things are.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

325. “The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

327. “The first step is for man to cease to be the slave of man. The second, is to cease to be the slave of the monsters of his own creation, the ghosts and phantoms of the air.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

328. “When passions and appetites are stronger than the intellect, men are savages; when the intellect governs the passions, when the passions are servants, men are civilized. The people need education – facts – philosophy.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

329. “He raised his hands, not to strike, but in benediction. Lincoln was the grandest figure of the fiercest civil war. He is the gentlest memory of our world.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

330. “The idea that there is a God who rewards and punishes, and who can reward, if he so wishes, the meanest and vilest of the human race, so that he will be eternally happy, and can punish the best of the human race, so that he will be eternally miserable, is subversive of all morality.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

331. “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.” It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: “Let us agree not to step on each other’s feet.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

332. “Shakespeare has done far more for the world than the Bible.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

333. “If the world ever advances beyond what it is today, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

334. “I admit that books were voted in and out, and that the Bible was finally formed in accordance with a vote.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

335. “Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

336. “An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

337. “Now the struggle for life is so sharp, competition is so severe, that few men can succeed who carry a useless burden. The businessmen of our country are compelled to lead temperate lives, otherwise their credit is gone.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

338. “I belong to the Great Church which holds the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grain of gold in every creed, and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

339. “Creationists use facts the same way a drunk uses a lightpost: for support instead of illumination.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

340. “The whip degrades; a severe father teaches his children to dissemble; their love is pretense, and their obedience a species of self-defense. Fear is the father of lies.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

341. “Suppose God should damn to everlasting fire a man so great and good, that he, looking from the abyss of hell, would forgive God, – how would a god feel then?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

342. “The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

343. “If priests had not been fond of mutton, lambs never would have been sacrified to god. Nothing was ever carried to the temple that the priest could not use, and it always happened that god wanted what his agents liked.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

344. “Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of temperance, for the sake of morality, or for the sake of anything. It is of more value than everything. Yet some people would destroy the sun to prevent the growth of weeds. Liberty sustains the same relation to all the virtues that the sun does to life.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

345. “The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

346. “I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

347. “Kindness is strength. Good-nature is often mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius. Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm. Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic. Epithets are the arguments of malice.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

348. “By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think and the right to think wrong.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

349. “Men and women desire each other, and this desire is a condition of civilization, progress, and happiness, and of everything of real value. But there is this profound difference in the sexes: in man this desire is the foundation of love, while in woman love is the foundation of this desire.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

350. “To avoid pain we must know the conditions of health. For the accomplishment of this end we must rely upon investigation instead of faith, upon labor in place of prayer. Most misery is produced by ignorance. Passions sow the seeds of pain.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll