Robert Green Ingersoll

Robert Green Ingersoll

25 quotes

As an American agnostic, lawyer, politician and orator, Robert Green Ingersoll earned a lasting place in the canon of memorable quotations. With equal ease, Robert Green Ingersoll moved between Death and Courage, finding connections others missed. 37 of Robert Green Ingersoll's sharpest quotes live here, spanning themes of Death, Courage, Hope, Happiness, and God. A line that stays with you: "Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity."

“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.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Good

All Quotes by Robert Green Ingersoll

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

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Best

“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.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

God

“The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Courage

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments there are consequences.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Nature

“Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Hope

“Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Happiness

“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.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Men

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Religion

“What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Love

“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.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Truth

“In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Death

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

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Courage

“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.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Good

“Reason, observation, and experience the holy trinity of science.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Experience

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

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Education

“If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

God

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

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Death

“An honest God is the noblest work of man.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

God

“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.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Strength

“Courage without conscience is a wild beast.”

— Robert Green Ingersoll

Courage