Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2023 Update)
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351. “Argument cannot be answered with insults. Kindness is strength; anger blows out the lamp of the mind.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

352. “Eternal punishment must be eternal cruelty, and I do not see how any man, unless he has the brain of an idiot, or the heart of a wild beast, can believe in eternal punishment.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

353. “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

354. “When one of your children tells a lie, be honest with him; tell him that you have told hundreds of them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way; that you have tried it. Tell him as the man did in Maine when his boy left home: “John, honesty is the best policy; I have tried both.””

— Robert G. Ingersoll

355. “I would have all the professors in colleges, all the teachers in schools of every kind, including those in Sunday schools, agree that they would teach only what they know, that they would not palm off guesses as demonstrated truths.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

356. “In the search for truth – that everything in nature seems to hide – man needs the assistance of all his faculties. All the senses should be awake.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

357. “It is grander to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

358. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

360. “The more liberty you give away the more you will have.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

361. “Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other impoverishes; the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

362. “Ignorance worships mystery; reason explains it; the one grovels, the other soars.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

363. “Orthodoxy cannot afford to put out the fires of hell.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

364. “Jehovah was not a moral god. He had all the vices and he lacked all the virtues. He generally carried out all his threats, but he never faithfully kept a promise.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

365. “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

366. “Liberty is the breath of progress.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

367. “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

368. “Whoever saw an angel barefooted?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

369. “The church teaches us that we can make God happy by being miserable ourselves.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

370. “The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

371. “Twenty years after the death of Luther there were more Catholics than when he was born. And twenty years after the death of Voltaire there were millions less than when he was born.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

372. “Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

373. “The first duty of man is to support himself – to see to it that he does not become a burden. His next duty is to help others if he has a surplus, and if he really believes they deserve to be helped.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

374. “What has religion to do with facts? Nothing.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

375. “We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

376. “Epithets are not arguments. Abuse does not persuade.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

377. “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

378. “Is it necessary that Heaven should borrow its light from the glare of Hell? Infinite punishment is infinite cruelty, endless injustice, immortal meanness. To worship an eternal gaoler hardens, debases, and pollutes even the vilest soul. While there is one sad and breaking heart in the universe, no good being can be perfectly happy.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

379. “If he was, in fact, God, he knew there was no such thing as death. He knew that what we called death was but the eternal opening of the golden gates of everlasting joy; and it took no heroism to face a death that was eternal life.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

380. “One dollar at compound interest, at twenty-four per cent., for one hundred years, would produce a sum equal to our national debt. Interest eats night and day, and the more it eats the hungrier it grows. The farmer in debt, lying awake at night, can, if he listens, hear it gnaw. If he owes nothing, he can hear his corn grow. Get out of debt as soon as you possibly can. You have supported idle avarice and lazy economy long enough.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

381. “Sometime, it will be found that people can be changed only by changing their surroundings. It is alleged that, at least ninety-five percent of the criminals transported from England to Australia and other penal colonies, became good and useful citizens in a new world.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

382. “It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or worship, or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in abhorrence and contempt.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

383. “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

384. “Liberty is the condition of progress. Without Liberty, there remains only barbarism. Without Liberty, there can be no civilization.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

385. “Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of anything.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

386. “Is not the history of real civilization the slow and gradual emancipation of the intellect, of the judgment, from the mastery of passion? Is not that man civilized whose reason sits the crowned monarch of his brain – whose passions are his servants?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

387. “At thirty most men have prejudices rather than opinions-that is to say, rather than judgments-and few men have lived to be sixty without materially modifying the opinions they held at thirty.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

388. “The emblem of equal rights. It means free hands, free lips, self- government, and the sovereignty of the individual.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

389. “As long as men did nothing except to render their fellows wretched; as long as they only butchered and burnt the innocent and helpless, God maintained the strictest and most heartless neutrality. But when some honest man, some great and tender soul expressed a doubt as to the truth of the Scriptures, or prayed to the wrong God, or to the right one by the wrong name, then the real God leaped like a wounded tiger upon his victim, and from his quivering flesh tore his wretched soul.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

390. “Wait until the world is free before you write a creed. In this creed there will be but one word – Liberty.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

391. “The moment you introduce a despotism in the world of thought, you succeed in making hypocrites – and you get in such a position that you never know what your neighbor thinks.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

392. “Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

393. “Now and then some one says that the religion of his father and mother is good enough for him, and wonders why anybody should desire a better. Surely we are not bound to follow our parents in religion any more than in politics, science or art.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

394. “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

395. “If you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

396. “Music was born of love. Had there never been any human affection, there never could have been uttered a strain of music.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

397. “Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

398. “It cannot be too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of miracle.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

399. “I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

400. “You cannot be so poor that you cannot help somebody.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll