"The Best of Robert Ingersoll" by Roger E. Greeley

• He sought to substitute the superiority of science and technology for the superstition and blind faith permeating his society. The clergy, unable to refute his arguments, resorted to calumny and epithets.
• Indeed, our greatest immortality lies in the lives of those who loved us.
• Ingersoll reserved his most penetrating sarcasm for ideas, institutions, and superstitions. He always had sympathy for the “victims” of orthodoxy but no sympathy whatsoever for orthodoxy itself. He was always careful to distinguish between belief and believer. He pitied those he regarded as “the prisoners of a cruel God.”
• At present to question the sincere beliefs of others is considered to be intolerant. Today, the free market of ideas and their vigorous debate stops on the threshold of the church. Religion and theology are truly off-limits, protected by an artificial sanctuary of “tolerance” and what is considered to be “mutual respect.”
• The majority has always found it difficult to accept individualists, debunkers, iconoclasts, innovators, dissidents and reformers, regardless of the merit of their causes.
• Superstition stands ready to open the prison’s door to those who dare to challenge her.
• It took strength of character then (and it still does) to challenge and question the validity and value of the moss-covered idols of the tribe.
• Millions cannot accept a basic tenet of contemporary religious humanism: immortality as continuing personal existence beyond the grave is an unproved and unprovable theological myth.
• Ingersoll was a champion of what he called the religion of humanity, better known as humanism today.
• The agnostic...occupies himself with this world, with things that can be ascertained and understood. He turns his attention to the sciences, to the solutions of questions that touch the well being of man.
• The stage has ever been the altar, the pulpit, the cathedral of the heart.
• The object of the artists is to present truthfully and artistically.
• Christ never wrote a solitary word of the New Testament -- not one word.
• Is it not strange that he [Christ] have no orders to have his words preserved -- words upon which hung the salvation of the world?
• What we call strategy is nothing more than lies.
• Don’t throw away wisdom because it is found in the company of folly; but do not say that folly is wisdom because it is found in its company.
• If a man would follow, today, the teaching of the Old Testament he would be a criminal. If he would strictly follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane.
• If the Bible is true, man is a special creation, and if man is a special creation, millions of facts must have conspired millions of ages ago, to deceive the scientific world of today.
• Blasphemy is the word that the majority hisses into the ears of the few.
• Pius ignorance always regard intelligence as a kind of blasphemy.
• The cry of blasphemy means only that the argument of the blasphemer cannot be answered.
• There is more beauty, more goodness, more intelligence in Shakespeare than in all the sacred books of this world.
• Who can account for the fact, if we are to be saved only be faith in Christ, that Matthew forgot it, the Luke said nothing about it, and the Mark never mentioned it except in two pages written by another person.
• According to these Christian Science people all that really exists is an illusion, and the only realities are things that don’t exist.
• Cruelty hardens and degrades; kindness reforms and enobles.
• The church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.
• The first duty of the General Government is to protect each citizen. The first duty of each citizen is to be true -- not to his state, but to the Republic.
• The more political power the colored man has the better he will be treated.
• To give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. We should all remember that to be like other people is to be unlike ourselves.
• It is impossible to make the penalty horrible enough to lessen crime.
• A penitentiary should be a school; the convicts should be educated.
• Let us remember that criminals are produced by conditions, and let us do what we can to change the conditions and to reform the criminals.
• Upon the shadowy shore of death the sea of trouble casts no wave.
• Design does not prove creation.
• Does not a Creator need a Creator as much as the thing we think has been created?
• Man in his ignorance supposed that all phenomena were produced by some intelligent powers with direct reference to him.
• When the civilized man finds his wife loves another he does not kill, he does not murder. He says to his wife, “You are free.” When the civilized woman finds that her husband loves another, she does not kill, she does not murder. She says to her husband, “I am free.”
• A court should care nothing for public opinion. An honest judge decides the law, not as it ought to be, but as it it, and the state of the public mind throws no light upon the question of what the law then is. But no matter how bad a man is, he has the right to be fairly tried.
• Each man in the U.S. is a sovereign and a king can freely speak his mind.
• I believe that education is the only lever capable of raising mankind.
• The object of all education should be to increase the usefulness of man -- usefulness to himself and to others. Every human being should be taught that his first duty is to take care of himself, and that to be self-respecting he must be self-supporting.
• The great trouble with the public school is that many things are taught that are of no immediate use.
• The more real education, the less crime -- the more homes, the fewer prisons.
• Most of the colleges of this country have simply classified ignorance.
• Every child should be taught to doubt, to inquire, to demand reasons.
• For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
• As long as man lives he should study. Death alone has the right to dismiss the school. No man can get too much knowledge.
• A lie will not fit a fact. It will only fit another lie made for the purpose. The life of a lie is simply a question of time. Nothing but truth is immortal.
• Nothing can be more infamous than intellectual tyranny. To put chains upon the body is nothing compared with putting shackles on the brain.
• Each nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators.
• No god was ever in advance of the nation that created him.
• God improves as man advances.
• God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race.
• Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.
• The fact is, we have no national religion and no national God. Every citizen is allowed to have a religion and a God of his own, or to reject all religions and deny the existence of all gods.
• The way to stop gambling in a city like this (NYC) is to have it absolutely open and prevent any gambling in secret. It will not do one-tenth the harm.
• To help others help themselves is the only real charity.
• Government cannot by law create wealth. The government produces nothing.
• Men in office reflect the average intelligence of the people, and no more.
• Good deeds are never childless. A noble life is never lost. A virtuous action does not die.
• New friends can never fill the places of the old.
• If we are immortal, it is a fact of nature, and that fact does not depend on bibles, on Christs, priests, or creeds.
• The hope of immortality never came from any religion. That hope of immortality has helped to make religion.
• It is a frightful fact that, when a superior race meets an inferior, the inferior imitates only the vices of the superior, and the superior those of the inferior. They exchange faults and failings. This is one of the most terrible facts in the history of the human race.
• Each man has the right to be judged upon his own merits. To oppress him, or to hold him in contempt on account of religion, race, or color is a crime.
• No one should fail to pick up every jewel of joy that can be found in his path. Every person should be as happy as he can provided he is not happy at the expense of another.
• Humor is one of the most valuable things in the human brain.
• Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable.
• The real temple is the home; civilization rests upon the family.
• The unit of good government is the family and anything that tends to destroy the family is perfectly devilish and infamous.
• I will give you my definition of metaphysics: Two fools get together; each admits what neither can prove, and thereupon both of them say, “hence we infer”. That is all there is of metaphysics.
• I have no doubt that the condition of the mind has some effect upon health.
• Believers in miracles should not endeavor to explain them. There is but one way to explain anything, and that is to account for it by natural agencies. The moment you explain a miracle, it disappears.
• Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.
• Only that which never happened needs to be substantiated by miracles.
• There is not a man with genius enough, with brains enough to own five million dollars. Why? The money will own him.
• Above all things -- educate your children.
• I am not trying to destroy another world. I am trying to prevent the theologians from destroying this world.
• I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders.
• Supernatural religion will fade from the world; in its place we shall have reason.
• All religions, so far as I know, claim to have been miraculously founded, miraculously preserved, and miraculously propagated.
• Every church that has a standard higher than human welfare is dangerous.
• Beyond the region of the Probable is the Possible, and beyond the Possible is the Impossible and beyond the Impossible are the religions of this world.
• Religion tries to force all minds into one mold. Knowing that all cannot believe, the church endeavors to make all say they believe.
• I do not fight people, I fight ideas, I fight principles, and I never go into personalities … I attack certain principles because I think they are wrong, but I always want it understood that I have nothing against persons -- nothing against victims.
• Any possible state of anarchy is better than organized crime, because in the chaos of anarchy justice may be done by accident.
• Legislators are, for the most part, controlled by those who, by their wealth and influence, elect them.
• There are two kinds of people that I have no use for -- leaders and followers. The leader should be principle; the leader should be a great object to be accomplished. The follower should be the man dedicated to the accomplishment of a noble end.
• The world must be made better through intelligence.
• Wealth is the surplus produced by labor, and the wealth of the world should keep the world from want.
• Wealth is not a crime and poverty is not a virtue -- although the virtuous have generally been poor.
• All prayers die in the air which they uselessly agitate.
• Think of the egotism of a man who believes that an infinite being wants his praise!
• The hands that help are far better than the lips that pray.
• Every article in a newspaper should be signed by the writer. And all the writers should do their best to tell the exact facts.
• Nothing in this world is more important than personal liberty.
• No man should be allowed to own any land that he does not use.
• Let us remember that those who have sought for the truths of nature have never persecuted their fellow-men.
• The great infidels, the thinkers, have lived for the good of man.
• The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.
• Man must learn to rely upon himself.
• The man who is not willing to give to every other the same intellectual rights he claims for himself, is dishonest, selfish and brutal.
• We are under no obligation to stand still and allow ourselves to be murdered by one who honestly thinks that it is his duty to take our lives.
• Let us judge each other by our actions, not by theories.
• I believe in helping people to help themselves.
• The superior man should protect the inferior. The powerful should be the shield of the weak.
• Whenever this world is sacrificed for the sake of another, a mistake has been made.
• Religion has not civilized man -- man has civilized religion.
• Astrology was displaced by astronomy. Alchemy and black art gave way to chemistry. Science is destined to take the place of religion. In my judgement, the religion of the future will be Reason.
• My creed it this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.
• The truth is, most Christians are better than their creeds; most creeds are better than the Bible, and most men are better than their God.
• As a rule religion is a sanctified mistake and heresy a slandered fact.
• About this world little is known -- about another world, nothing.
• Only those able to raise and educate children should have them. Children should be better born -- better educated.
• Church and state should be absolutely divorced.
• The truth is our government is not founded upon the rights of gods but upon the rights of men.
• If we should agree tomorrow to put God in the Constitution, the question would then be: Which God?
• When you fail to tax any species of property, you increase the tax of other people owning the rest.
• The framers of our Constitution wished forever to divorce church and state.
• There are circumstances in which suicide is natural, sensible, and right. When a man is of no use to himself, when he can be of no use to others, when his life is filled with agony, when the future has no promise of relief, then I think he has the right to cast the burden of life away and seek the repose of death.
• It is never right to do wrong, and it is never wrong to do right.
• As to the existence of the supernatural, one man knows precisely as much, and exactly as little as another.
• I am a believer in the diffusion of intelligence.
• Everything of beauty tends to the elevation of man.
• Nothing discloses character like the use of power.
• Free thought will give us truth.
• Genius has the climate of perpetual growth.
• Good character is not the work of a day; it is the work of a life.
• The human race cannot afford to exchange its liberty for any possible comfort.
• Intellectual freedom is only the right to be honest.
• Every man who expresses an honest thought is a soldier in the army of intellectual liberty.
• Kindness is always evidence of greatness.
• Liberty is the birthright of all.
• A library is an arsenal.
• Religion is a kind of disease.
• Sleep is the best medicine in the world.
• Superstition is, always has been, and forever will be, the foe of progress, the enemy of education and the assassin of freedom.
• Science, the only possible savior of mankind, must put it in the power of woman to decide for herself whether she will or will not become a mother.
• Here in this world, where life and death are equal kings, all should be brave enough to meet what all the dead have met.
• We cannot say that death is not a good. We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life, or the door of another, or whether the night here is not somewhere else a dawn.
• The dead do not suffer.
• This is my creed: Happiness is the only good; reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest.
• The agnostic believes in developing the brain, in cultivating the affections, the tastes, the conscience, the judgement, to the end that man may be happy in this world.
• Christianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that is does not believe that a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in God.
• Nearly all the arts unite in theater, and it is the result of the best, the highest, the most artistic, that man can do.
• Imagination is the mother of enthusiasm. Imagination fans the little spark into a flame great enough to warm the human race; and enthusiasm is to the mind what spring is to the world.
• Nothing in the inspired book is so dangerous as accuracy.
• Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth.
• I am in favor of giving every right to women that I claim for myself.
• Schoolhouses are the real temples and teachers are the true priests. Let us develop the brain, civilize the heart, and give wings to the imagination.
• Fear is the father of lies.
• I do not believe in returning good for evil. I believe in returning justice for evil.
• The doctrine of nonresistance is to me absurd. The right should be defened and the wrong resisted. Goodness should have the right to protect itself.
• Any government which makes a distinction on account of color, is a disgrace to the age in which we live.
• Religion tries to force all minds into one mold. Knowing they all cannot believe, the church endeavors to make them all say they believe.
• The criminal is dangerous and society has a right to protect itself.
• In my judgment, no human being was ever made better, nobler by being whipped or clubbed.
• Solitary confinement is a species of torture. I think the criminal should not be punished. He should be reformed, if he is capable of reformation.
• Society should not punish; it should protect itself only.
• Capital punishment degrades and hardens a community and it is the work of savagery.
• To inflict unnecessary pain hardens him who inflicts it, hardens each among those who witness it, and tends to demoralize the community.
• Next to eternal joy, next to being forever with those we love and those who loved us, next to that, is to be wrapped in the dreamless drapery of eternal peace. Next to eternal life is eternal sleep. Upon the shadowy shore of death the sea of trouble casts no wave. Eyes that have been curtained by the everlasting dark, will never know again the burning touch of tears. Lips touched by eternal silence will never speak again the broken words of grief. Hearts of dust do not break. The dead to not weep. Within the tomb no veiled and weeping sorrow sits, and in the rayless gloom is crouched no shuddering fear.
• No man can remember when he commenced and no man can remember when he ends.
• The idea that marriage is something more than a contract is at the bottom of the legal and judicial absurdities that surround this subject.
• I do wish that every law providing for the punishment of a criminal offense should distinctly define the offense.
• The greatest blessing conferred by our government is the free school. In importance it rises above everything else that government does. In its influence it is far greater.
• There is no real reforming power in fear or punishment. Men cannot be tortured into greatness, into goodness.
• Every man should be taught some useful art. His hands should be educated as well as his head.
• Too much doubt is better than too much credulity.
• Abject faith is barbarism; reason is civilization.
• Ignorance worships mystery; reason explains it; the one grovels, the other soars.
• Many people imagine that falsehoods may become respectable on account of age, that a certain reverence goes with antiquity, and that if a mistake is covered with the moss of sentiment it is altogether more credible than a parvenu fact.
• There is this difference between thought and action: for our actions we are responsible to ourselves and to those injuriously affected. For thoughts there can, in the nature of things, be no responsibility to gods or men, here or hereafter.
• Intellectual liberty is the air of the soul, the sunshine of the mind, and without it, the world is a prison; the universe is a dungeon.
• If the nation leaves the poor to starve, and the weak and unfortunate to perish, it is hard to see for what purpose the nation should be preserved.
• There is no nation in which the majority leads the way. In the progress of man, the few have been the nearest right. Wisdom has often been trampled beneath the feet of the multitude.
• Intelligence, integrity and pillars that support the state.
• The doctrine of eternal punishment is the most infamous of all doctrines--born of ignorance, cruelty and fear.
• A noble life enriches all the world.
• Solemnity is a condition precedent to believing anything without evidence. And if you can only get a man solemn enough, awed enough, he will believe anything.
• Capitol can do nothing without the assistance of labor. All there is of value in this world is the product of labor.
• I want to get all the happiness out of life that I can. I want to suck the orange dry, so that when death comes nothing but the peelings will be left.
• The less we know, the more we imagine that we know; but the more we know, the smaller seems the sum of knowledge.
• Magic is not medicine.
• Great wealth is the mother of crime.
• Men give millions of dollars to carry the gospel to the heathen, and leave their own neighbors without bread.
• War destroys. Peace creates. War is decay and death. Peace is growth and life--sunlight and air. War kills men. Peace maintains them. Artillery does not reason; it asserts. A bayonet has point enough, but no logic. When the sword is drawn, reason remains in the scabbard.
• You never can make great men and great women by keeping them out of the way of temptation. You have to educate them to withstand temptation.
• All men should be temperate.
• I believe in turning our attention to things of importance--to questions that may by some possibility be solved. It is of no importance to me whether God exists or not. I exist, and it is important to me to be happy while I exist. Therefore, I had better turn my attention to finding out the secret of happiness, instead of trying to ascertain the secret of the universe.
• A religion that does not command the respect of the greatest minds will, in a little while, excite the mockery of all.
• Astrology was displaced by astronomy. Alchemy and black art gave way to chemistry. Science is destined to take the place of religion. In my judgment, the religion of the future will be reason.
• We need the religion of the real, the faith that rests on fact. Let us turn our attention to this world--the world in which we live.
• I believe in the religion of the body--of physical development.
• I will not sacrifice the world I have for one I know not of.
• I insist, happiness is the end--virtue the means--any any thing that wipes a tear from the face of man is good.
• The only authority is Nature--the facts we know.
• My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.
• The truth is, most Christians are better than their creeds; most creeds are better than the Bible, and most men are better than their God.
• As a rule religion is a sanctified mistake and heresy a slandered fact.
• About this world little is known--about another world, nothing.
• Only those able to raise and educate children should have them. Children should be better born--better educated.
• Church and state should be absolutely divorced.
• The truth is our government is not founded upon the rights of gods but upon the rights of men.
• If we should agree tomorrow to put God in the Constitution, the question would then be: Which God?
• When you fail to take any species of property, you increase the tax of other people owning the rest.
• The framers of our Constitution wished forever to divorce church and state.
• There are circumstances in which suicide is natural, sensible, and right. When a man is of no use to himself, when he can be of no use to others, when his life is filled with agony, when the future has no promise of relief, then I think he has the right to cast the burden of life away and seek the repose of death.
• When a man is useless to himself and to others he has the right to determine what he will do about living...I don’t take into consideration any supernatural nonsense.
• I think all days, all times and all seasons are alike sacred. I think the best day in a man’s life is the day that he is truly happiest. Every day in which good is done to humanity is a holy day.
• It is never right to do wrong, and it is never wrong to do right.
• As to the existence of the supernatural, one man knows precisely as much, and exactly as little as another.
• Being satisfied that the supernatural does not exist, man should turn his entire attention to the affairs of this world, to the facts of nature. And first of all, he should avoid waste--waste of energy, waste of wealth. Every good man, every good women, should try to do away with war, to stop the appeal to savage force.
• I stand by the dogma of demonstration.
• The man who finds a truth lights a torch.