Quotes by 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.

There can be goodness without much intelligence - but it seems to me that perfect intelligence and perfect goodness must go together.

It is hard to conceive of the utter demoralization, of the political blindness and immorality, of the patriotic dishonesty, of the cruelty and degradation of a people who supplemented the incomparable Declaration of Independence with the Fugitive Slave Law.

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

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.

I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Loves fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne.

I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.

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

Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

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.

Roscoe Conkling was a man of superb courage. He not only acted without fear, but he had that fortitude of soul which bears the consequences of the course pursued without complaint.

A great man is a torch in the darkness, a beacon in superstitions night, an inspiration and a prophecy.

Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.

What is it that distinguishes you and me from the lower animals - from the beasts? More, I say, than anything else, human sympathy - human sympathy.

If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesnt pay Smith.

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.

Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand, neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak of truth runs the vine of beauty.

We can conceive of eternity because we cannot conceive of a cessation of time. We can conceive of infinite space because we cannot conceive of so much matter that our imagination will not stand upon the farthest star and see infinite space beyond.

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

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.