Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!

3829

Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come to my grave and truthfully say: 'He who sleeps here never gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind word.

3022

Nothing but truth is immortal.

2235

Justice is the only worship.
Love is the only priest.
Ignorance is the only slavery.
Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now,
The place to be happy is here,
The way to be happy is to make others so.
Wisdom is the science of happiness.

4580

And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?

4224

I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, - blown and flared by passion's storm, - and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.

1549

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

3636

Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.

2616

So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.

1669

Let us account for all we see by the facts we know. If there are things for which we cannot account, let us wait for light. To account for anything by supernatural agencies is, in fact to say that we do not know. Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.

3374

The religionist is a living fossil, embedded in that rock called faith.

3122

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know - the Church does neither.

2933

The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul - breaking the mental manacles - getting the brain out of bondage - giving courage to thought - filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.

3398

No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

1132

There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.

4087

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

2733

In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.

4112

There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences.

3278

This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.

4346

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

2583

The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each other on account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about botany, and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father and mother. It is what people do not know, that they persecute each other about. Science will bring, not a sword, but peace.

3211

I believe in the fireside. I believe in the democracy of home. I believe in the republicanism of the family. I believe in liberty, equality and love.

3991

Theology is a superstition - Humanity a religion.

4844

Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

1136

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.

4425

But I will tell you what I say to my children: 'Go where you will; commit what crime you may; fall to what depth of degradation you may; you can never commit any crime that will shut my door, my arms, or my heart to you. As long as I live you shall have one sincere friend.

1914

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

1831