Quotes from 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.

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

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.

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

Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.

Not only are we here to protect the public from vicious criminals in the street but also to protect the public from harmful ideas.

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

The falling leaf that tells of autumn's death is, in a subtler sense, a prophecy of spring.

The myth of hell represents all the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable.

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

As long as a man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school.

Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.

Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an infinite being wants his praise!

Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.

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 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.

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

Intellect, without heart, is infinitely cruel. . . . So that, after all, the real aristocracy must be that of goodness where the intellect is directed by the heart.

Intelligence, guided by kindness, is the highest wisdom. . . .

There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women - of free mothers.

I would rather live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody but men.

In the search for truth - that everything in nature seems to hide - man needs the assistance of all his faculties. All the senses should be awake.

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

Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable.