Robert Green Ingersoll

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and ...
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I hope there is another life, for I would like to see how things come ...
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Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget limitations, even as a river by ...
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If the guardians of society, the protectors of 'young persons,' could have had their way, ...
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A good character, like a Gibraltar, will stand against the testimony of all the rascals in the universe, no matter how they assail it. It will stand, and it will stand firmer and grander the more it is assaulted.

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.

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

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.

A good way to make children tell the truth is to tell it yourself. Keep your word with your child the same as you would with your banker.

All the men of wealth should remember that everybody in a community has got, in some way, to be supported. I want to see them so that they can support themselves by their own labor.

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.

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

All the punishment in the world will not reform a man, unless he knows that he who inflicts it upon him does it for the sake of reformation, and really and truly loves him, and has his good at heart. Punishment inflicted for gratifying the appetite makes man afraid but debases him.

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.

As long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power.

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

Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.

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.

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Custom is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead.

Every good government is made up of good families. The unit of good government is the family, and anything that tends to destroy the family is perfectly devilish and infamous.

Every fact in the universe will fit every other fact in the universe. A lie never did, never will fit anything but another lie made to fit it. Never, never!

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.

Every man is dishonest who lives upon the labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne.

For the most part, we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs.

Few rich men own their property, their property owns them.

Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.

Freedom has invented every useful machine, from the lowest to the highest, from the simplest to the most complex.

Freedom believes in education - the salvation of slavery is ignorance.

Good nature is the cheapest commodity in the world, and love is the only thing that will pay ten percent, to borrower and lender both.

Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.

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.

Happiness is the legal-tender of the soul. Joy is wealth.

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

He who does not want does not act.

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.

Homes make patriots. He who has sat by his own fireside with wife and children will defend it. Few men have been patriotic enough to shoulder a musket in defense of a boarding house. The prosperity and glory of our country depend upon the number of people who are the owners of homes.

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

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

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

How poor this world would be without its graves, without the memories of its mighty dead. Only the voiceless speak forever.

I believe in living for this world - that's my doctrine - to make everybody happy that you can.

I can imagine no sweeter way to end one's life than in the quiet of the country, out of the mad race for money, place and power - far from the demands of business - out of the dusty highway where fools struggle and strive for the hollow praise of other fools.

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

I concluded that all religions had the same foundation - a belief in the supernatural - a power above nature that man could influence by worship - by sacrifice and prayer.

I hope there is another life, for I would like to see how things come out in this world when I am dead.

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.

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.

I want to tell you this: you cannot get the robe of hypocrisy on you so thick that the sharp eye of childhood will not see through every veil.

I simply claim that what ideas I have, I have a right to express, and that any man who denies that right to me is an intellectual thief and robber.

I will live by the standard of reason, and if thinking in accordance with reason takes me to perdition, then I will go to hell with my reason rather than to heaven without it.

I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.

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.

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

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

If the government can make money, what on earth does it collect taxes for you and me for? Why don't it make what money it wants, take the taxes out, and give the balance to us?

If matter cannot be destroyed, cannot be annihilated, it could not have been created. The indestructible must be uncreatable.

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

If you wish to reflect credit upon your parents, accomplish more than they did, solve problems that they could not understand, and build better than they knew.

If the guardians of society, the protectors of 'young persons,' could have had their way, we should have known nothing of Byron or Shelley. The voices that thrill the world would now be silent.

In every age in which books have been produced, the governing class, the respectable, have been opposed to the works of real genius.

Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy.

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences.

In my judgment, the American people are too brave, too charitable, too generous, too magnanimous, to believe in the infamous dogma of an eternal hell.

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.

In order to appreciate a great man, we must know his surroundings. We must understand the scope of the drama in which he played - the part he acted - and we must also know his audience.

In spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God.

In the grave should be buried the prejudices and passions born of conflict. Charity should hold the scales in which are weighed the deeds of men.

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

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

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.

Insolence is not logic, epithets are the arguments of malice.

It has been said that a man of genius should select his ancestors with great care - and yet there does not seem to be as much in heredity as most people think. The children of the great are often small.

It always has been and forever will be impossible for slavery or any kind or form of injustice to produce a great poet.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

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.

It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about.

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.

It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.

Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.

Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.

Kings had their clowns, the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius.

Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.

Let us account for all we see by the facts we know. If there are things for which we cannot account, let us wait for light.

Most people are Democrats because they hate something, most people are Republicans because they love something.

Many Americans do not understand that the officers of the government are simply the servants of the people.

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.

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.

Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions for itself.

Nothing is more despicable than to reach fame by crawling, position by cringing.

Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle, every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished.

No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.

Our fathers knew that the flag was never intended to protect any man who wanted to assail it.

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.

Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight.

Our fathers worshiped the golden calf. The worst you can say of an American now is, he worships the gold of the calf.

Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner.

Perish the infamous doctrine that man can have property in man. Let us resent with indignation every effort to put a chain upon our minds.

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

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.

Religion is not theory - it is life. It is not intellectual conviction - it is divine humanity, and nothing else.

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

Shakespeare pursued the highway of the right. He did not seek to put his characters in a position where it was right to do wrong.

Science has nothing in common with religion. Facts and miracles never did and never will agree.

Taste and love are not the servants of the will. Love is and must be free. It rises from the heart like perfume from a flower.

Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain, that you have the right to explore all heights and depth, that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought.

So far as I am concerned, I think more of reasons than of reputations, more of principles than of persons, more of nature than of names, more of facts than of faiths.

The Catholics of Maryland were the first people on the new continent to declare universal religious toleration. Let this be remembered to their eternal honor.

The American people do not like neutrality. They would rather a man were on the wrong side than on neither.

The doctrine of immortality rests upon human affection. We love, therefore, we wish to live.

The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.

The children of great authors do not, as a rule, become writers.

The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have is to so live and so improve himself in heart and brain as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman, and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man.

The government, in my judgment, cannot create money, the government can give its note, like an individual, and the prospect of its being paid determines its value.

The great poets have sympathized with the people. They have uttered in all ages the human cry. Unbought by gold, unawed by power, they have lifted high the torch that illuminates the world.

The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words. They outlast all others.

The great man who gives a true transcript of his mind fascinates and instructs. Most writers suppress individuality. They wish to please the public.

The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.

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

The man who has really won the love of one good woman in this world, I do not care if he dies in the ditch a beggar - his life has been a success.

The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose the character of nations, the ideals of the human race.

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

The mind cannot be securely anchored. If we do not advance, we go backward. If we do not grow, we decay. If we do not develop, we shrink and shrivel.

The sacred books of all the world are worthless dross and common stones compared with Shakespeare's glittering gold and gleaming gems.

The religion that has to be supported by law is without value, not only, but a fraud and a curse. The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket is hardly worth making.

The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue - or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes.

The truth is that all great men have had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.

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.

The walls of that grand edifice called a good character have to be worked at during life.

There are so many societies, so many churches, so many -isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career.

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

There are times when a falsehood well told bridges over quite a difficulty, but in the long run, you had better tell the truth, even if you swim the creek.

There is no common sense in going to the field to fight and leaving a man at home to undo all that you accomplish.

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.

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

There may be another life, and if there is, the best way to prepare for it is by making somebody happy in this.

There is no slavery but ignorance.

They who gain applause and power by pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices and passions of the multitude are the enemies of liberty.

They believed that every man should know how to read and how to write, and should find out all that his capacity allowed him to comprehend. That is the glory of the Puritan fathers.

Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

This great question of predestination and free will, of free moral agency and accountability, and being saved by the grace of God, and damned for the glory of God, have occupied the mind of what we call the civilized world for many centuries.

Voltaire lighted a torch and gave to others the sacred flame. The light still shines and will as long as man loves liberty and seeks for truth.

Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book and creed and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free.

Walt Whitman defended the sacredness of love, the purity of passion - the passion that builds every home and fills the world with art and song.

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.

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.

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

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.

When men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is erected - and this life with which men are in love is represented in a thousand forms.

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.

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

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.

When you go home, fill the house with joy so that the light of it will stream out the windows and doors and illuminate even the darkness. It is just as easy that way as any in the world.

Whoever labors for the happiness of those he loves elevates himself, no matter whether he works in the dreary shop or the perfumed field.

Whether there is another life or not, if there is any being who gave me this, I shall thank him from the bottom of my heart, because, upon the whole, my life has been a joy.

Whoever marries simply for himself will make a mistake, but whoever loves a woman so well that he says, 'I will make her happy,' makes no mistake. And so with the woman who says, 'I will make him happy.'

You have to change men physically before you change them intellectually.

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.