Quotes from Robert G. Ingersoll

Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb.

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.

Reason, Observation, and Experience — the Holy Trinity of Science.

I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.

Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.

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

A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

God has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably found on the side of those in power.

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.

An infinite God ought to be able to protect Himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures.

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.

Sweet are the thoughts that favour of content; The quiet mind is richer than a crown... Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss, Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss... Obscurèd life sets down a type of bliss, A mind content both crown and kingdom is.

Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.

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

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.

Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.

Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.

We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for the dead.

When a man really believes that it is necessary to do a certain thing to be happy forever, or that a certain belief is necessary to ensure eternal joy, there is in that man no spirit of concession. He divides the whole world into saints and sinners, into believers and unbelievers, into God's sheep and Devil's goats, into people who will be glorified and people who are damned.

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

Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

He stands erect by bending over the fallen. He rises by lifting others.