Robert Green Ingersoll Quotes

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success or the fear of failure - who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only victor.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

I say that no man can be greater than the man who bravely and heroically sacrifices his life for the good of others. No man can be greater than the one who meets death face to face, and yet will not shrink from what he believes to be his highest duty.

~ 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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State. Above all, the citizens of a free nation should honor the brave and independent man - the man of stainless integrity, of will and intellectual force.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

As long as we can get redress in the courts, as long as the laws shall be honestly administered, as long as honesty and intelligence sit upon the bench, as long as intelligence sits in the chairs of jurors, this country will stand, the law will be enforced, and the law will be respected.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

There can be goodness without much intelligence - but it seems to me that perfect intelligence and perfect goodness must go together.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love's fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Roscoe Conkling was a man of superb courage. He not only acted without fear, but he had that fortitude of soul which bears the consequences of the course pursued without complaint.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition's night, an inspiration and a prophecy.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand, neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak of truth runs the vine of beauty.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

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.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

The more liberty you give away the more you will have.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll