Robert G. Ingersoll > Quotes

“To hate man and love god seems to be the sum of all creeds.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“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

“They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping or in the keeping of her God the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“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. ”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. ”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“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.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Gods and Other Lectures

“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.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“As more people become more intelligent they care less for preachers and more for teachers.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be believed only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called faith.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“It is a splendid thing to think that the woman you really love will never grow old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, through the mask of years, if you really love her, you will always see the face you love and won. And a woman who really loves a man does not see that he grows old; he is not decrepit to her; she always sees the same gallant gentleman who won her hand and heart.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“The true civilization is where every man gives to every other man every right he claims for himself.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“With soap, baptism is a good thing.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“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

“My dog," he said, "just barks and plays -has all he wants to eat. He never works- has no trouble about business. In a little while he dies, and that is all. I work with all my strength. I have no time to play. I have trouble every day. In a little while I will die, and then I go to hell. I wish that I had been a dog.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Lectures - Why I Am An Agnostic

“In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishment – there are consequences.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“As far as I am concerned I wish to be out on the high seas. I wish to take my chances with wind, and wave, and star. And I had rather go down in the glory and grandeur of the storm, than rot in any orthodox harbor.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll