Robert Green Ingersoll Quotes

I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man.

Nothing could be more idiotic and absurd than the doctrine of the trinity.

The combined wisdom and genius of all mankind cannot possibly conceive of an argument against liberty of thought.

Hope is the consolation of the world.

Many people think they have religion when they are troubled with dyspepsia.

Tell me there is a God in the serene heavens that will damn his children for the expression of an honest belief! More men have died in their sins, judged by your orthodox creeds, than there are leaves in all the forests in the wide world ten thousand times over. Tell me these men are in Hell; that these men are in torment; that these children are in eternal pain, and that they are to be punished forever and forever! I denounce this doctrine as the most infamous of lies.

The few took advantage of the ignorant many. They pretended to have received messages from the Unknown. They stood between the helpless multitude and the gods. They were the carriers of flags of truce. At the court of heaven they presented the cause of man, and upon the labor of the deceived they lived.

Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.

They say that when god was in Jerusalem he forgave his murderers, but now he will not forgive an honest man for differing with him on the subject of the Trinity. They say that God says to me, "Forgive your enemies." I say, "I do;" but he says, "I will damn mine." God should be consistent. If he wants me to forgive my enemies he should forgive his. I am asked to forgive enemies who can hurt me. God is only asked to forgive enemies who cannot hurt him. He certainly ought to be as generous as he asks us to be.

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.

No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me.

No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion.

The churches have no confidence in each other. Why? Because they are acquainted with each other.

Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.

To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself.

Liberty is the breath of progress.

It is grander to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed.

Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

It cannot be said too often that actions are good or bad in the light of consequences, and that a clear perception of consequences would control actions. That which increases the sum of human happiness is moral; and that which diminishes the sum of human happiness is immoral. . . . Blind, unreasoning obedience is the enemy of morality.

I do not believe in loving enemies; I have pretty hard work to love my friends.

Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.

An infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.

There may or may not be a Supreme Ruler of the universe-but we are certain that man exists, and we believe that freedom is the condition of progress; that it is the sunshine of the mental and moral world, and that without it man will go back to the den of savagery, and wll become the fit associate of wild and ferocious beasts.

Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

Liberty cannot be sacrificed for the sake of anything.

In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.

If this religion is true, then there is only one Savior, only one narrow path to life. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other religion.

If the people were a little more ignorant, astrology would flourish - if a little more enlightened, religion would perish.

We are told in the Pentateuch, that god, the father of us all, gave thousands of maidens, after having killed their fathers, their mothers, and their brothers, to satisfy the brutal lusts of savage men. If there be a god, I pray him to write in his book, opposite my name, that I denied this lie for him.

And yet this same Deity says to me, resist not evil; pray for those that despitefully use you; love your enemies, but I will eternally damn mine. It seems to me that even gods should practice what they preach.

It is told that the great Angelo, in decorating a church, painted some angels wearing sandals. A cardinal looking at the picture said to the artist: Whoever saw angels with sandals? Angelo answered with another question: Whoever saw an angel barefooted?

As long as every question is answered by the word "God," scientific inquiry is simply impossible.

We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living-Hope for the dead.

Do the best that can be done and then . . . be resigned.

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, east a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

The real searcher after truth will not receive the old because it is old, or reject the new because it is new. He will not believe men because they are dead, or contradict them because they are alive. With him an utterance is worth the truth, the reason it contains, without the slightest regard to the author. He may have been a king or serf - a philosopher or servant, - but the utterance neither gains nor loses in truth or reason. Its value is absolutely independent of the fame or station of the man who gave it to the world.

If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker.

But honest men do not pretend to know; they are candid and sincere; they love the truth; they admit their ignorance, and they say, We do not know.

When one of your children tells a lie, be honest with him; tell him that you have told hundreds of them yourself. Tell him it is not the best way; that you have tried it. Tell him as the man did in Maine when his boy left home: "John, honesty is the best policy; I have tried both."

Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves.

To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellow-men.

No man has a right to leave his wife to fight the battle alone if he is able to help. No man has a right to desert his children if he can possibly be of use. As long as he can add to the comfort of those he loves, as long as he can . . . be of any use, it is his duty to remain.

We have at last ascertained that miracles can be perfectly understood; that there is nothing mysterious about them; that they are simply transparent falsehoods.

I want no heaven for which I must give my reason; no happiness in exchange for my liberty, and no immortality that demands the surrender of my individuality. Better rot in the windowless tomb, to which there is no door but the red mouth of the pallid worm, than to wear the jeweled collar of a god.

It seems to me impossible for a civilized man to love or worship, or respect the God of the Old Testament. A really civilized man, a really civilized woman, must hold such a God in abhorrence and contempt... In the New Testament, death is not the end, but the beginning of punishment that has no end. In the New Testament the malice of God is infinite and the hunger of his revenge eternal... This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the implacable enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor.

They knew that it was necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.