Robert Green Ingersoll

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

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

“Let us put theology out of religion. Theology has always sent the worst to heaven, the best to hell.”

“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.”

“In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.”

“I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.”

“When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.”

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

“Reason, observation, and experience the holy trinity of science.”

“If I owe Smith ten dollars and God forgives me, that doesn't pay Smith.”

“An honest God is the noblest work of man.”

“Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted and heaven crammed with these phantoms.”

“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.”

“Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence. Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.”

“My creed is that: 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.”

“Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.”

“Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.”

“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 will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous - if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.”

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments there are consequences.”

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.”

“The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.”

“A fact never went into partnership with a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of wonders. A fact will fit every other fact in the universe, and that is how you can tell whether it is or is not a fact. A lie will not fit anything except another lie.”