Robert Green Ingersoll

In my judgment, the American people are too brave, too charitable, too generous, too magnanimous, to believe in the infamous dogma of an eternal hell.

No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.

Whoever marries simply for himself will make a mistake; but whoever loves a woman so well that he says, 'I will make her happy,' makes no mistake. And so with the woman who says, 'I will make him happy.'

I concluded that all religions had the same foundation - a belief in the supernatural - a power above nature that man could influence by worship - by sacrifice and prayer.

Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle, every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished.

The place does not make the man, nor the sceptre the king. Greatness is from within.

For the most part, we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs.

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.

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.

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.

The American people do not like neutrality. They would rather a man were on the wrong side than on neither.

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.

They who gain applause and power by pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices and passions of the multitude are the enemies of liberty.

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

There are times when a falsehood well told bridges over quite a difficulty, but in the long run, you had better tell the truth, even if you swim the creek.

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.

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.

The time to be happy is now, and the place to be happy is here.

It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.

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

The more false we destroy, the more room there will be for the true.