Robert Green Ingersoll's Quotes

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice.

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

There is no slavery but ignorance.

The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.

I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.

Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.

Few rich men own their property; their property owns them.

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

The more liberty you give away the more you will have.

Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought.

Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.

What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

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

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.

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.