Robert G. Ingersoll quotes:

Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith! Banish me from Eden when you will; but first let me eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge!

The telescope destroyed the firmament, did away with the heaven of the New Testament, rendered the ascension of our Lord and the assumption of his Mother infinitely absurd, crumbled to chaos the gates and palaces of the New Jerusalem, and in their places gave to man a wilderness of worlds.

The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul -- breaking the mental manacles -- getting the brain out of bondage -- giving courage to thought -- filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.

Justice is the only worship.Love is the only priest.Ignorance is the only slavery.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.Wisdom is the science of happiness.

Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent.

Arguments cannot be answered by personal abuse; there is no logic in slander, and falsehood, in the long run, defeats itself."

The doctrine that future happiness depends upon belief is monstrous. It is the infamy of infamies. The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance, called 'faith.

Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God. While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.

There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence.

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

Nothing but truth is immortal.

I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.

Injustice upon earth renders the justice of of heaven impossible.

In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.

Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.

To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.

When I think of how much this world has suffered; when I think of how long our fathers were slaves, of how they cringed and crawled at the foot of the throne, and in the dust of the altar, of how they abased themselves, of how abjectly they stood in the presence of superstition robed and crowned, I am amazed.

No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science."

The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn. The less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything...

The hands that help are better far than lips that pray.

With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.

In all ages the people have honored those who dishonored them. They have worshiped their destroyers; they have canonized the most gigantic liars, and buried the great thieves in marble and gold. Under the loftiest monuments sleeps the dust of murder.

No one infers a god from the simple, from the known, from what is understood, but from the complex, from the unknown, and incomprehensible. Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate every form of tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty.

The theologians dead, knew no more than the theologians now living.

The religionist is a living fossil, embedded in that rock called faith.

This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.

Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man.