Robert Green Ingersoll
A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.Collection: Great
Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.Collection: Hope
Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.Collection: Hope
When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.Collection: Veterans
It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.Collection: Courage
When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then - and not until then - will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher become a real and blessed truth.Collection: Teacher
It is hard to conceive of the utter demoralization, of the political blindness and immorality, of the patriotic dishonesty, of the cruelty and degradation of a people who supplemented the incomparable Declaration of Independence with the Fugitive Slave Law.Collection: Independence
Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.Collection: Happiness
In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.Collection: Death
Science has nothing in common with religion. Facts and miracles never did and never will agree.Collection: Science
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.Collection: Legal
Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.Collection: Sympathy
We can conceive of eternity because we cannot conceive of a cessation of time. We can conceive of infinite space because we cannot conceive of so much matter that our imagination will not stand upon the farthest star and see infinite space beyond.Collection: Imagination
Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Happiness
There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise.Collection: Business
Man never had an idea - man will never have an idea, except those supplied to him by his surroundings. Every idea in the world that man has came to him by nature.Collection: Nature
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.Collection: Nature
Most people can bear adversity; but if you wish to know what a man really is give him power.Collection: Power
The time to be happy is now, and the place to be happy is here.Collection: Time
Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.Collection: Religion
A prayer that must have a cannon behind it better never be uttered. Forgiveness ought not to go in partnership with shot and shell. Love need not carry knives and revolvers.Collection: Forgiveness
The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.Collection: Courage
It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Freedom
The more liberty you give away the more you will have.Collection: Freedom
Courage without conscience is a wild beast.Collection: Courage
A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy.Collection: Great
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.Collection: Strength
Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.Collection: Anger
If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.Collection: Forgiveness
We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.Collection: Death
What is it that distinguishes you and me from the lower animals - from the beasts? More, I say, than anything else, human sympathy - human sympathy.Collection: Sympathy
Every religion in the world has denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that they all tell the truth - about others.Collection: Religion
Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.Collection: Religion
No system of religion should go in partnership with barbarism. Neither should any Christian feel it his duty to defend the savagery of the past.Collection: Religion
Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.
In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.
Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne.
You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture, nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these and what you have done. You can make hypocrites by the million.
Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to protect the rights of man, I am a rebel. Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to give man liberty, to clothe him in all his just rights, I am on the side of that rebellion.
Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.
I say, let us think. Let each one express his thought. Let us become investigators, not followers, not cringers and crawlers. If there is in Heaven an infinite being, he never will be satisfied with the worship of cowards and hypocrites.
Neutrality is generally used as a mask to hide unusual bitterness. Sometimes it hides what it is - nothing. It always stands for hollowness of head or bitterness of heart, sometimes for both.
You have to change men physically before you change them intellectually.
A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.
If there is any God, there is only one way to please him, and that is by a conscientious discharge of your obligations to your fellow men.