Robert Green Ingersoll Quotes

Only those who live on the labor of the ignorant are the enemies of science. Real love and real religion are in no danger from science. The more we know the safer all good things are.

The few have said, Think! The many have said, Believe! The first doubt was the womb and cradle of progress, and from the first doubt, man has continued to advance.

Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings.

It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good, and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring.

All prayers die in the air which they uselessly agitate.

Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world.

It seems to me that if there is some infinite being who wants us to think alike he would have made us alike.

Honest investigation is utterly impossible within the pale of any church, for the reason, that if you think the church is right you will not investigate, and if you think it wrong, the church will investigate you.

According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to himself and the other two.

Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud

Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction.

All religion is slavery.

Theology is not what we know about God, but what we do not know about Nature.

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.

The priests of one religion never credit the miracles of another religion. Is this because priests instinctively know priests?

The moment you introduce a despotism in the world of thought, you succeed in making hypocrites - and you get in such a position that you never know what your neighbor thinks.

Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.

Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable.

It cannot be too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of miracle.

I have always noticed that the people who have the smallest souls make the most fuss about getting them saved.

All religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. Shakespeare is my bible, Burns my hymn-book.