The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
Robert Green Ingersoll
In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstition’s night, an inspiration and a prophecy.
Robert Green Ingersoll
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.
Robert Green Ingersoll
A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The American people do not like neutrality. They would rather a man were on the wrong side than on neither.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The American people do not like neutrality. They would rather a man were on the wrong side than on neither.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The time to be happy is now, and the place to be happy is here.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
Robert Green Ingersoll
I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love’s fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Every good government is made up of good families. The unit of good government is the family, and anything that tends to destroy the family is perfectly devilish and infamous.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Voltaire lighted a torch and gave to others the sacred flame. The light still shines and will as long as man loves liberty and seeks for truth.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.
Robert Green Ingersoll
There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Taste and love are not the servants of the will. Love is and must be free. It rises from the heart like perfume from a flower.
Robert Green Ingersoll
A good character, like a Gibraltar, will stand against the testimony of all the rascals in the universe, no matter how they assail it. It will stand, and it will stand firmer and grander the more it is assaulted.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Kings had their clowns, the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Happiness is not a reward – it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment – it is a result.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Every religion in the world has denounced every other religion as a fraud. That proves to me that they all tell the truth – about others.
Robert Green Ingersoll
How poor this world would be without its graves, without the memories of its mighty dead. Only the voiceless speak forever.
Robert Green Ingersoll
No system of religion should go in partnership with barbarism. Neither should any Christian feel it his duty to defend the savagery of the past.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Custom is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture, nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these and what you have done. You can make hypocrites by the million.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The great poet is a great artist. He is painter and sculptor. The greatest pictures and statues have been painted and chiseled with words. They outlast all others.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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
Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner.
Robert Green Ingersoll
When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then – and not until then – will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher become a real and blessed truth.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Neutrality is generally used as a mask to hide unusual bitterness. Sometimes it hides what it is – nothing. It always stands for hollowness of head or bitterness of heart, sometimes for both.
Robert Green Ingersoll
You need not go back four thousand years for heroines. The world is filled with them today. They do not belong to any nation, nor to any religion, nor exclusively to any race. Wherever woman is found, they are found.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Suspicion is only another form of cowardice. The man who suspects constantly suspects because he is afraid. Whenever you find a man with a free, frank, generous, brave nature, you will find that man without suspicion.
Robert Green Ingersoll
In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
Robert Green Ingersoll
In spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Nothing is more despicable than to reach fame by crawling, position by cringing.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose the character of nations, the ideals of the human race.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself.
Robert Green Ingersoll
As long as we can get redress in the courts, as long as the laws shall be honestly administered, as long as honesty and intelligence sit upon the bench, as long as intelligence sits in the chairs of jurors, this country will stand, the law will be enforced, and the law will be respected.
Robert Green Ingersoll
In order to appreciate a great man, we must know his surroundings. We must understand the scope of the drama in which he played – the part he acted – and we must also know his audience.
Robert Green Ingersoll
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.
Robert Green Ingersoll
They who gain applause and power by pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices and passions of the multitude are the enemies of liberty.
Robert Green Ingersoll