It is safe to say that every truth in the histories of those times (The Bible) is the result of accident or mistake

All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed and bore fruit in this one word,...

The closer I’m bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat...

It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god

I found that the clergy did not understand their own book

The good part of Christmas is not always Christian — it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, natural.

Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows.

An honest God is the noblest work of man.

That church teaches us that we can make God happy by being miserable ourselves;

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

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

You have no right to erect your tollgate upon the highways of thought. You have no right to leap from the hedges of superstition and strike down the pioneers of the human race. You have...

I would rather live with the woman I love in a world full of trouble, than to live in heaven with nobody but men

Those who have loved God most, have loved man least

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.

But if the witnesses are inspired of God then there is no reason for their disagreeing on anything, and if they do disagree it is a demonstration that they were not inspired

If we admit that some infinite being has controlled the destinies of persons and peoples, history becomes a most cruel and bloody farce

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.

I leave pansies, the symbolic flower of freethought, in memory of the Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll, who stood for equality, education, progress, free ideas and free lives, against the superstition and bigotry of religious dogma....

It cannot be too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of miracle

Every cradle asks us, “Whence?” and every coffin, “Whither?” The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed

Every library is an arsenal

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.

Custom meets us at the cradle and leaves us only at the tomb

A mortgage casts a shadow on the sunniest field

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

He stands erect by bending over the fallen. He rises by lifting others.

Orthodoxy cannot afford to put out the fires of hell

A mule has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity

In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.

I admit that books were voted in and out, and that the Bible was finally formed in accordance with a vote

I combat those only who, knowing nothing of the future, prophesy an eternity of pain- those who sow the seeds of fear in the hearts of men- those only who poison all the springs of...

{The resolution of the surviving members of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry, whom Robert Ingersoll was the commander of, at his funeral quoted here}Robert G. Ingersoll is dead. The brave soldier, the unswerving patriot, the true...

Whether the Bible is true or false, is of no consequence in comparison with the mental freedom of the race

Nothing could be more dangerous to the existence of this Republic than to introduce religion into politics

If Christ, in fact, said “I came not to bring peace but a sword,” it is the only prophecy in the New Testament that has been literally fulfilled

Calvin founded a little theocracy, modeled after the Old Testament, and succeeded in erecting the most detestable government that ever existed, except the one from which it was copied

If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first...

It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.

There can be but little liberty on earth while men worship a tyrant in heaven.

Science built the Academy, superstition the inquisition

At the bottom of the ladder is Catholicism, and at the top is Science

The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it.

Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called ‘natural’ man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation.

The undressed is vulgar – the nude is pure

Heresy is what the minority believe, it is the real name given by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak