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!

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.

Nothing but truth is immortal.

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.

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

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.

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

Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

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.

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

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.

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