Quotes from Robert Green Ingersoll

Religion is one of the phases of thought through which the world is passing

Religion has not civilized man, man has civilized religion.

There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor

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

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

The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.

The triumph of justice is the only peace.

The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.

Reason, Observation and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science — have taught us that happiness is the only good; that the time to be happy is now, and the way to be happy is to make others so. This is enough for us. In this belief we are content to live and die. If by any possibility the existence of a power superior to, and independent of, nature shall be demonstrated, there will then be time enough to kneel. Until then, let us stand erect.

The truth shall make you free, but first it shall make you angry.

Justice is the only worship. Love is the only priest. Ignorance is the only slavery. 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. Wisdom is the science of happiness.

It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.

If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.

This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

So, ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.

There is no harmony between religion and science. When science was a child, religion sought to strangle it in the cradle. Now that science has attained its youth, and superstition is in its dotage, the trembling, palsied wreck says to the athlete: "Let us be friends." It reminds me of the bargain the cock wished to make with the horse: "Let us agree not to step on each other's feet.

They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest ... The dead do not suffer.

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

Waktu untuk berbahagia itu sekarang, Tempat untuk berbahagia itu di sini, Cara untuk berbahagia ialah dengan membuat orang lain berbahagia.

Religion has been the enemy of social order, because it directs the attention of man to another world. Religion teaches its votaries to sacrifice this world for the sake of that other. The effect is to weaken the ties that hold families and States together. Of what consequence is anything in this world compared with eternal joy?

When the world is civilized, no wife will become a mother against her will. Man will then know that to enslave another is to imprison himself.

Science does not persecute. It does not shed blood—it fills the world with light. It cares nothing for heresy; it develops the mind, and enables man to answer his own prayers.

My object is to drive fear out of the world. Fear is the jailer of the mind. Christianity, superstition—that is to say, the supernatural—makes every brain a prison and every soul a convict