Quotes from Robert Green Ingersoll

I find that in this day and generation, the meanest men have the lowest estimate of woman; that the greater the man is, the grander he is, the more he thinks of mother, wife and daughter.

No system of religion should go in partnership with barbarism. Neither should any Christian feel it his duty to defend the savagery of the past.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Liberty is the breath of progress.

Voltaire, as full of life as summer is full of blossoms, giving his ideas upon all subjects at the expense of prince and king, was exiled to England.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Upon the great questions of origin, of destiny, of immortality, of . . . other worlds, every honest man must say, 'I do not know.' Upon these questions, this is the creed of intelligence.

A man is not moral because he is obedient through fear or ignorance. Morality lives in the realm of perceived obligation.

There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. The hand of earth is stretched uselessly towards heaven. From the clouds there comes no help.

Every man who expresses an honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty.

The object of all education should be to increase the usefulness of man - usefulness to himself and others.

The man who finds a truth lights a torch.

The doctrine of eternal punishment is in perfect harmony with the savagery of the men who made the orthodox creeds. It is in harmony with torture, with flaying alive, and with burnings.

The man who accepts opinions because they have been entertained by distinguished people, is a mental snob.

One man in the right will finally get to be a majority.