Robert Green Ingersoll

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

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.

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

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

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.

A crime against god is a demonstrated impossibility.

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.

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.

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.

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

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Every child should be taught that useful work is worship and that intelligent labor is the highest form of prayer.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Sacred are the lips from which has issued only truth.

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.

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

You see, after all, few rich men own their property. The property owns them.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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!

There is no slavery but ignorance.

In nature there are neither rewards or punishments - there are consequences.

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

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.

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

If the money is raised by taxation, then the burden will fall where it ought to fall, . . . and the rich and stingy will no longer be able to evade the duties of citizenship and of humanity.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It is better to deserve without receiving than to receive without deserving.

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.

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.

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.

He who does not want does not act.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

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

Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.

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

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

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

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.'

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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