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!


Robert G. Ingersoll

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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
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
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