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Robert G. Ingersoll

362 quotes

“Men and women are not virtuous by law. Law itself does not of itself create virtue, nor is it the foundation or fountain of love. Law should protect virtue, and law should protect the wife, if she has kept her contract, and the man, if he has fulfilled his. But the death of love is the end of marriage. Love is natural. Back of all ceremony burns and will forever burn the sacred flame. There has been no time in the world's history when that torch was extinguished. In all ages, in all climes, among all people, there has been true, pure, and unselfish love.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Writings of Robert G. Ingersoll (1900), Dresden Edition, publishing house: C.P. Farrell, chapter: Is Divorce Wrong (1889), page 426
“I do not borrow ideas. I have a factory of my own.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Letters of Robert G. Ingersoll (Philosophical Library, 1951) p. 578
“A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth does not need the assistance of miracle. A fact will fit every other fact in the Universe, because it is the product of all other facts. A lie will fit nothing except another lie made for the express purpose of fitting it.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Declaration of Independence announces the sublime truth, that all power comes from the people. This was a denial, and the first denial of a nation, of the infamous dogma that God confers the right upon one man to govern others. It was the first grand assertion of the dignity of the human race. It declared the governed to be the source of power, and in fact denied the authority of any and all gods. Through the ages of slavery — through the weary centuries of the lash and chain, God was the acknowledged ruler of the world. To enthrone man, was to dethrone God.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Individuality (1873).
“An honest God is the noblest work of man.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1876 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: This is derived from Alexander Pope's "An honest man's the noblest work of God." Motto of the essay "The Gods" (1876) as published in The Gods and Other Lectures (1879).
“Day by day, religious conceptions grow less and less intense. Day by day, the old spirit dies out of book and creed. The burning enthusiasm, the quenchless zeal of the early church have gone, never, never to return. The ceremonies remain, but the ancient faith is fading out of the human heart. The worn-out arguments fail to convince, and denunciations that once blanched the faces of a race, excite in us only derision and disgust. As time rolls on, the miracles grow mean and small, and the evidences our fathers thought conclusive utterly fail to satisfy us.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1876 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Gods" (1876) as published in The Gods and Other Lectures (1879).
“Reason, Observation and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1876 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Gods" (1876) as published in The Gods and Other Lectures (1879); this was one of his earliest versions of what became known as his "Creed". Some variants:
“Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen forehead of every traitor to his country and every maligner of his fair reputation.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1876 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Nominating speech for Blaine for President, at the Republican National Convention (15 June 1876).
“Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Some Mistakes of Moses" (1879) Section II, "Free Schools".
“And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Some Mistakes of Moses (1879)] Section XVIII, "Dampness".
“The more false we destroy the more room there will be for the true.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Orthodoxy" (1884). The Complete Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (1902) Vol. 2. p. 343
“Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle. Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Motley and Monarch", The North American Review, December 1885
“I do not believe in forgiveness as it is preached by the church. We do not need the forgiveness of God, but of each other and of ourselves. If I rob Mr. Smith and God forgives me, how does that help Smith? If I, by slander, cover some poor girl with the leprosy of some imputed crime, and she withers away like a blighted flower and afterward I get the forgiveness of God, how does that help her? If there is another world, we have got to settle with the people we have wronged in this. No bankrupt court there. Every cent must be paid.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Must We Do To Be Saved?" (1880) Section XI, "What Do You Propose?
“I cannot believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. I would rather that every god would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Must We Do To Be Saved? (1880) Section X, "The Evangelical Alliance.
“I have made up my mind that if there is a God, he will be merciful to the merciful. Upon that rock I stand. That he will not torture the forgiving. Upon that rock I stand. That every man should be true to himself, and that there is no world, no star, in which honesty is a crime. Upon that rock I stand. The honest man, the good woman, the happy child, have nothing to fear, either in this world or the world to come. Upon that rock I stand.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Must We Do To Be Saved? (1880) Section XI, "What Do You Propose?
“Oh," but they say to me, "you take away immortality." I do not. If we are immortal it is a fact in nature, and we are not indebted to priests for it, nor to bibles for it, and it cannot be destroyed by unbelief.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Must We Do To Be Saved?" (1880) Section XI, "What Do You Propose?
“Is there beyond the silent night An endless day? Is death a door that leads to light? We cannot say.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Devil" (1899) Section IX, "Conclusion: Declaration of the Free" Compare: "the door of Darkness", The Rubaiyat, stanza 64.
“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 — and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Tribe to Eban C. Ingersoll" (1879)
“There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences. The life of Christ is worth its example, its moral force, its heroism of benevolence.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Christian Religion" The North American Review, August 1881
“Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning. About the meaning of this book, called a revelation, there have been ages of war, and centuries of sword and flame. If written by an infinite God, he must have known that these results must follow; and thus knowing, he must be responsible for all.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Some Mistakes of Moses (1879).
“The men who declare that woman is the intellectual inferior of man, do not, and cannot, by offering themselves in evidence, substantiate their declaration.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Helen Hamilton Gardner, Men, Women and Gods (1885)
“Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Limitations of Toleration" (8 May 1888), in The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol VII
“Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the McKinley League, New York (29 October 1896)
“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.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why I Am an Agnostic." (1896)
“The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Is Religion? (1899) is Ingersoll's last public address, delivered before the American Free Religious association, Boston, June 2, 1899. Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Dresden Memorial Edition Volume IV, …
“The present is the child, and the necessary child, of all the past, and the mother of all the future.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How To Reform Mankind (1896), chapter I. Republished by Kessinger Publishing, Llc, 2005.
“Every human being longs to be happy, to satisfy the wants of the body with food, with roof and raiment, and to feed the hunger of the mind, according to his capacity, with love, wisdom, philosophy, art and song.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How To Reform Mankind (1896), chapter I. Republished by Kessinger Publishing, Llc, 2005.
“I belong to the Great Church which holds the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great and good of every race and clime; that finds with joy the grain of gold in every creed, and floods with light and love the germs of good in every soul.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert G. Ingersoll, a declaration in discussion with Rev. Henry M. Field on Faith and Agnosticism, quoted in Vol. VI of Farrell's edition of his works, also in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922) edite…
“Good-by, gentlemen! I am not asking to be Governor of Illinois … I have in my composition that which I have declared to the world as my views upon religion. My position I would not, under any circumstances, not even for my life, seem to renounce. I would rather refuse to be President of the United States than to do so. My religious belief is my own. It belongs to me, not to the State of Illinois. I would not smother one sentiment of my heart to be the Emperor of the round world.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On refusing the Republican nomination for Illinois governor, as quoted in "Ingersoll the Magnificent" (11 August 1954) by Joseph Lewis
“I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart — the best brain.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Celibacy is the essence of vulgarity.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our ancestors in the ages that are gone really believed that by force you could convince a man. You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by force, but I will tell you what you can do by force, and what you have done by force. You can make hypocrites by the million.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Blasphemy is a padlock which hypocrisy tries to put on the lips of all honest men.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) first seen 1885 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Blasphemy lecture delivered at Brooklyn, N.Y., prior to Ingersoll's departure for Europe, February 22d, 1885 (reproduced at pg. 105).
“Whoever has an opinion of his own, and honestly expresses it, will be guilty of heresy. Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every church pretends that it has a revelation from God, and that this revelation must be given to the people through the church; that the church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with a revelation — not from God — but from the church. Had the people submitted to this preposterous claim, of course there could have been but one church, and that church never could have advanced. It might have retrograded, because it is not necessary to think or investigate in order to forget. Without heresy there could have been no progress.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How long, O how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in a darkness deeper than death?”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The heretics have not thought and suffered and died in vain. Every heretic has been, and is, a ray of light.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought. Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why should man be afraid to think, and why should he fear to express his thoughts? Is it possible that an infinite Deity is unwilling that a man should investigate the phenomena by which he is surrounded? Is it possible that a god delights in threatening and terrifying men? What glory, what honor and renown a god must win on such a field! The ocean raving at a drop; a star envious of a candle; the sun jealous of a fire-fly.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One hundred years ago, our fathers retired the gods from politics.The Declaration of Independence is the grandest, the bravest, and the profoundest political document that was ever signed by the representatives of a people. It is the embodiment of physical and moral courage and of political wisdom.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights, and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more. In other words, our fathers were the first men who had the sense, who had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword; that it should be allowed only to exert its moral influence.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rights of all are equal: justice, poised and balanced in eternal calm, will shake from the golden scales in which are weighed the acts of men, the very dust of prejudice and caste: No race, no color, no previous condition, can change the rights of men.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For a hundred years hell has been gradually growing cool, the flames have been slowly dying out, the brimstone is nearly exhausted, the fires have been burning lower and lower, and the climate gradually changing. To such an extent has the change already been effected that if I were going there to-night I would take an overcoat and a box of matches.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They say that the eternal future of man depends upon his belief. I deny it. A conclusion honestly arrived at by the brain cannot possibly be a crime; and the man who says it is, does not think so. The god who punishes it as a crime is simply an infamous tyrant. As for me, I would a thousand times rather go to perdition and suffer its torments with the brave, grand thinkers of the world, than go to heaven and keep the company of a god who would damn his children for an honest belief.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have been denounced by the religious press and by ministers in their pulpits as a demon, as an enemy of order, as a fiend, as an infamous man. Of this, however, I make no complaint. A few years ago they would have burned me at the stake and I should have been compelled to look upon their hypocritical faces through flame and smoke. They cannot do it now or they would.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether or not the soul is immortal is a fact in nature and cannot be changed by any book whatever. If I am immortal, I am. If am not, no book can render me so. It is no more wonderful that I should live again than that I do live.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As soon as I had said these things, various gentlemen felt called upon to answer me. I want to say that if there is anything I like in the world it is fairness. And one reason I like it so well is that I have had so little of it.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can say, if I wish, extremely mean and hateful things. I have read a great many religious papers and discussions and think that I now know all the infamous words in our language.”
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source