Top 400 Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “Not only are we here to protect the public from vicious criminals in the street but also to protect the public from harmful ideas.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

402. “I believe in the gospel of cheerfulness, the gospel of Good Nature; the gospel of Good Health. Let us pay some attention to our bodies. Take care of our bodies, and our souls will take care of themselves.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

403. “It is with men as with other things. The mullein needs only a year, but the oak a century, and the greatest men are those who have continued to grow as long as they have lived.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

404. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

406. “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

407. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

409. “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

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

— Robert G. Ingersoll

411. “Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

412. “He bade the slave ships speed from coast to coast, Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

413. “It certainly is no proof that a man is inspired simply because he is right.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

414. “Do right, not to deny yourself but because you love yourself and because you love others.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

415. “If you say to a man: “Eighteen hundred years ago the dead were raised,” he will reply: “Yes, I know that.” And if you say: “A hundred thousand years from now all the dead will be raised,” he will probably reply: “I presume so.” But if you tell him: “I saw a dead man raised to-day,” he will ask, “From what madhouse have you escaped?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

416. “I do not believe in loving enemies; I have pretty hard work to love my friends.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

417. “It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

418. “There is more real devotional feeling summoned from the temple of the mind by great music than by any sermon ever delivered.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

419. “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 have been a quibbling attorney, or a hypocritical parson.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

420. “The idea that an infinite God, creator of all worlds, came to this grain of sand, learned the trade of a carpenter, discussed with Pharisees and scribes, and allowed a few infuriated Hebrews to put him to death that he might atone for the sins of men and redeem a few believers from the consequences of his own wrath, can find no lodgment in a good and natural brain.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

421. “Sacred are the lips from which has issued only truth.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

422. “It is labor that has made the world a fit habitation for the human race.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

423. “Christ never wrote a solitary word of the New Testament – not one word. There is an account that he once stooped and wrote something in the sand, but that has not been preserved. He never told anybody to write a word.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

424. “If the reason I give is a good one, you will act upon it. If it is a bad one I cannot make it better by piling epithet upon epithet. There is no logic in abuse; there is no argument in an epithet.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

425. “Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

426. “Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to help make others so.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

427. “Nobody ever saw anybody who had seen anybody who had heard of anybody that had ever seen anybody that had ever seen one of the original Hebrew manuscripts.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

428. “No one, in the world’s whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of nature.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

429. “To know that the Bible is the literature of a barbarous people, to know that it is uninspired, to be certain that the supernatural does not and cannot exist – all this is but the beginning of wisdom.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

430. “No man can control his belief. You hear evidence for and against, and the integrity of the soul stands at the scales and tells which side rises and which side falls. You can not believe as you wish. You must believe as you must.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

431. “Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

432. “Huddled in folds they listened with wide eyes while the shepherds told of ravening wolves. With great gladness they exchanged their fleeces for security. Shorn and shivering, they had the happiness of seeing their protectors comfortable and warm. Through all the years, those who plowed divided with those who prayed. Wicked industry supported pious idleness, the hut gave to the cathedral, and frightened poverty gave even its rags to buy a robe for hypocrisy.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

433. “Life is not the same to all – to some a blessing, to some a curse, to some not much in any way.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

434. “The oppressors, the tyrants, those who trample on the rights of others, the robbers of the poor, those who put wages below the living point, the ministers who make people insane by preaching the dogma of eternal pain; these are the men who drive the weak, the suffering and the helpless down to death.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

435. “How fortunate it is for us all that it is somewhat unnatural for a human being to obey. Universal obedience is universal stagnation; disobedience is one of the conditions of progress.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

436. “When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

437. “Death is liberty, absolute and eternal.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

438. “The real question is, can we prevent the ignorant, the poor, the vicious, from filling the world with their children?”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

439. “It does not occur to him that it is necessary to account for the existence of an infinite personality. He is perfectly certain that there can be no design without a designer, and he is equally certain that there can be a designer who was not designed.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

440. “Hope is the consolation of the world.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll