He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success or the fear of failure - who...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Our fathers worshiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an American now is, he worships the ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of a...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL What light is to the eyes--what air is to the lungs--what love is to the heart, liberty is to the so...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his ideas upon all subjects at the e...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world, and love is the only thing that will pay ten per...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I say that no man can be greater than the man who bravely and heroically sacrifices his life for the...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Anger blows out the lamp of the mind.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The credulity of the church is decreasing, and the most marvelous miracles are not either 'explained...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish - if a little more enlightened, ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If I had my way I'd make health catching instead of disease.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that ho...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL What has religion to do with facts? Nothing
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If all the bones of all the victims of the Catholic Church could be gathered together, a monument hi...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have is to so live and so improve himself in heart a...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perditi...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and g...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromi...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I say, let us think. Let each one express his thought. Let us become investigators, not followers, n...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be k...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture, nor by social ostracism. But I will tell y...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Freedom believes in education - the salvation of slavery is ignorance.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to b...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL It is hard to conceive of the utter demoralization, of the political blindness and immorality, of th...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Taste and love are not the servants of the will. Love is and must be free. It rises from the heart l...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL When you go home, fill the house with joy so that the light of it will stream out the windows and do...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love's fair realm, husband and wife are king and ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I can imagine no sweeter way to end one's life than in the quiet of the country, out of the mad ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Whether there is another life or not, if there is any being who gave me this, I shall thank him from...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education. The sons of the poor, hav...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The more liberty you give away the more you will have.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL This great question of predestination and free will, of free moral agency and accountability, and be...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Voltaire! A name that excites the admiration of men, the malignity of priests. Pronounce that name i...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Kings had their clowns, the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a servan...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A prayer that must have a cannon behind it better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not to go in p...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL In France, the people were the sport of a king's caprice. Everywhere was the shadow of the Basti...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL We can conceive of eternity because we cannot conceive of a cessation of time. We can conceive of in...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A good character, like a Gibraltar, will stand against the testimony of all the rascals in the unive...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL All the punishment in the world will not reform a man, unless he knows that he who inflicts it upon ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Fear, prejudice, malice, and the love of approbation bribe a thousand men where gold bribes one.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and ou...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Custom is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a p...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak,...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The undressed is vulgar - the nude is pure
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The mind cannot be securely anchored. If we do not advance, we go backward. If we do not grow, we de...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL There are times when a falsehood well told bridges over quite a difficulty, but in the long run, you...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If there is any God, there is only one way to please him, and that is by a conscientious discharge o...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Voltaire made up his mind to destroy the superstition of his time. He fought with every weapon that ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Every good government is made up of good families. The unit of good government is the family, and an...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The walls of that grand edifice called a good character have to be worked at during life.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL We must remember that we have to make judges out of men, and that by being made judges their prejudi...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact wi...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own impriso...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The great religious historian, Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully omitte...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Heresy is what the minority believe, it is the real name given by the powerful to the doctrine of th...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy a coffin
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A mule has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL To prevent famine, one plow is worth a million sermons, and even patent medicines will cure more dis...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The careful reader of the New Testament will find three Christs described: - One who wished to prese...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Nothing could be more dangerous to the existence of this Republic than to introduce religion into po...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Homes make patriots. He who has sat by his own fireside with wife and children will defend it. Few m...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL These contradictions are gross and palpable and demonstrate that the New Testament is not inspired, ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it yourself. Keep your word with your child th...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL How poor this world would be without its graves, without the memories of its mighty dead. Only the v...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I find that in this day and generation, the meanest men have the lowest estimate of woman; that the ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and common stones compared with Shakespeare...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL So far as I am concerned, I think more of reasons than of reputations, more of principles than of pe...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Give the church a place in the Constitution, let her touch once more the sword of power, and the pri...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppres...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He w...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change th...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak,...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of th...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain;...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If matter cannot be destroyed, cannot be annihilated, it could not have been created. The indestruct...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Whoever labors for the happiness of those he loves elevates himself, no matter whether he works in t...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The great poets have sympathized with the people. They have uttered in all ages the human cry. Unbou...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Every man who expresses an honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL In my judgment, the American people are too brave, too charitable, too generous, too magnanimous, to...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The real oppressor, enslaver, and corrupter of the people is the Bible
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Voltaire lighted a torch and gave to others the sacred flame. The light still shines and will as lon...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL For the most part, we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL It has been said that a man of genius should select his ancestors with great care - and yet there do...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Neutrality is generally used as a mask to hide unusual bitterness. Sometimes it hides what it is - n...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL You need not go back four thousand years for heroines. The world is filled with them today. They do ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convict...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Anger blows out the lamp of the mind
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called 'natural' man, who uses all his facul...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL And we are called upon to worship such a God; to get upon our knees and tell him that he is good, th...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL There are some truths, however, that we should never forget: Superstition has always been the relent...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL That church teaches us that we can make God happy by being miserable ourselves;
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A mortgage casts a shadow on the sunniest field.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he wou...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that ho...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he woul...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If the guardians of society, the protectors of 'young persons,' could have had their way, we...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL It is a blessed thing that in every age someone has had the individuality enough and courage enough ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the inf...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL It is better to deserve without receiving, than to receive without deserving
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The Declaration of Independence was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogm...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I would rather live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, than to live in heaven with no...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL With soap, baptism is a good thing
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL In all ages hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Science built the Academy, superstition the inquisition
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Every library is an arsenal
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If Christ, in fact, said "I came not to bring peace but a sword," it is the only prophecy in the New...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL He (Thomas Paine) saw oppression on every hand; injustice everywhere; hypocrisy at the altar; venali...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A place where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL There are some of his sayings which show him to have been a devout Jew, others that he wished to des...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL He stands erect by bending over the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The intellectual advancement of man depends on how often he can exchange an old superstition for a n...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A believer is a bird in a cage, a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A crime against god is a demonstrated impossibility
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL There is not in all the pulpits ingenuity enough to harmonize these ignorant and stupid contradictio...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the i...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The clergy know that I know that they know that they do not know
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I found that the clergy did not understand their own book
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, everyone...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Love is the only bow of life's dark cloud. It is the Morning and Evening Star. It shines upon the cr...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL It is said that from Mount Sinai God gave, amid thunderings and lightnings, ten commandments for the...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL It (The Bible) has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL My principal objections to orthodox religion are two - slavery here and hell hereafter
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I suppose it can be truthfully said that Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputat...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL My creed is that; Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Calvin was as near like the God of the Old Testament as his health permitted
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Every cradle asks us, "Whence?" and every coffin, "Whither?" The poor barbarian, weeping above his d...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history be...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of progress, the enemy of education a...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I combat those only who, knowing nothing of the future, prophesy an eternity of pain- those who sow ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL To argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Happiness is not a reward / it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment / it is a result.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon r...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The good part of Christmas is not always Christian -- it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendenc...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL They believed that every man should know how to read and how to write, and should find out all that ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I want to tell you this: you cannot get the robe of hypocrisy on you so thick that the sharp eye of ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express; and that any man who denies that r...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL As long as we can get redress in the courts, as long as the laws shall be honestly administered, as ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL You have no right to erect your tollgate upon the highways of thought. You have no right to leap fro...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL To hate man and worship god seems to be the sum of all the creeds
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A God who gave his entire time for 40 years to the work of converting three millions of people, and ...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Laughing has always been considered by theologians as a crime
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL At the bottom of the ladder is Catholicism, and at the top is Science
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Is it not wonderful that the creator of all worlds, infinite in power and wisdom, could not hold his...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Whether the Bible is true or false, is of no consequence in comparison with the mental freedom of th...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is somethi...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL The Bible was written by barbarians in a barbarous, coarse and vulgar age
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL You have no right to erect your toll-gate upon the highways of thought
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL One good schoolmaster is worth a thousand priests
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL Those who have loved God most, have loved man least
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those times (The Bible) is the result of acci...
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL A good deed is the best prayer
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.
ROBERT GREEN INGERSOLL