Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “I have always noticed that the people who have the smallest souls make the most fuss about getting them saved.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

302. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

304. “Nothing could be more dangerous to the existence of this Republic than to introduce religion into politics.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

305. “If all the historic books of the Bible were blotted from the memory of mankind, nothing of value would be lost...”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

306. “I have no confidence in any religion that can be demonstrated only to children.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

307. “We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

308. “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

309. “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

310. “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

311. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

313. “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

314. “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

315. “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

316. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

319. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

322. “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

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “Even in the business of corporations honesty is the best policy, and the companies that have acted in accordance with the highest standard, other things being equal, have reaped the richest harvest.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

328. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

330. “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

331. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

334. “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

335. “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

336. “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

337. “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

338. “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

339. “Lincoln was not a type. He stands alone – no ancestors, no fellows, no successors.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

340. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

344. “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

345. “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

346. “Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

347. “The few have said, Think! The many have said, Believe! The first doubt was the womb and cradle of progress, and from the first doubt, man has continued to advance.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

349. “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

350. “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