Quotes from Robert Green Ingersoll

Strange but true: those who have loved God most have loved men least.

Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man.

If the world ever advances beyond what it is today, it must be led by men who express their real opinions.

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

Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice.

The first step is for man to cease to be the slave of man. The second, is to cease to be the slave of the monsters of his own creation, the ghosts and phantoms of the air.

As we become civilized we are governed less by persons and more by principles. . . . The best of all leaders is the man who teaches people to lead themselves.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart-the best brain.

I do not see how it is possible for an intelligent human being to conclude that the Song of Solomon is the work of God, and that the tragedy of Lear was the work of an uninspired man.

But honest men do not pretend to know; they are candid and sincere; they love the truth; they admit their ignorance, and they say, We do not know.

The Declaration of Independence 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.

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

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.

The rights of men and women should be equal and sacred-marriage should be a perfect partnership.

It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius.

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.

I think the man who eats the bread of idleness is under a certain obligation to speak well of labor.

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.

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers: It is the only prayer that deserves an answer—good, honest, noble work.

If the Bible and my brain are both the work of the same infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and my brain do not agree?

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

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

Lincoln was not a type. He stands alone - no ancestors, no fellows, no successors.