Quotes from Robert Green Ingersoll

Even in the business of corporations honesty is the best policy, and the companies that have acted in accordance with the highest standard, other things being equal, have reaped the richest harvest.

Honesty is the mother of confidence; it unites, combines and solidifies society. Dishonesty is disintegration; it destroys confidence; it brings social chaos. . . .

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

The hope of science is the perfection of the human race. The hope of theology is the salvation of a few, and the damnation of almost everybody.

Every creed is a rock in running water: humanity sweeps by it. Every creed cries to the universe, "Halt!" A creed is the ignorant Past bulling the enlightened Present.

Commerce is the great civilizer. We exchange ideas when we exchange fabrics.

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.

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.

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.

If there is any God, there is only one way to please him, and that is by a conscientious discharge of your obligations to your fellow men.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing discloses real character like the use of power.

Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws.

It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good, and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring.

The man who invented the telescope found out more about heaven than the closed eyes of prayer ever discovered.

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.

Intelligence is the only moral guide.

Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles.

I thank thee, Mother Nature, that thou hast put ingenuity enough in the brain of a child, when attacked by a brutal parent, to throw up a little breastwork in the shape of a lie.