Quotes from Robert G. Ingersoll

Justice should remove the bandage from her eyes long enough to distinguish between the vicious and the unfortunate.

Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought...

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and his fellow men.

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.

There is no slavery but ignorance.

This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.

Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!

There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments — there are consequences.

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

Progress is born of doubt and inquiry. The Church never doubts, never inquires. To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know—the Church does neither.

And why does this same God tell me how to raise my children when he had to drown his?

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. I attack the monsters, the phantoms of imagination that have ruled the world. I attack slavery. I ask for room -- room for the human mind.

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.

As man develops, he places a greater value upon his own rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner thing. As he values his own rights, he begins to value the rights of others. And when all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized.

The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul -- breaking the mental manacles -- getting the brain out of bondage -- giving courage to thought -- filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.

In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.

Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any doctrine that will not bear investigation is not a fit tenant for the mind of an honest man. Any man who is afraid to have his doctrine investigated is not only a coward but a hypocrite.

Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.

Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.

No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.

The greatest test of courage is to bear defeat without losing heart.