Robert Green Ingersoll

“Few rich men own their property; their property owns them.”

“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.”

“It is what people do not know that they persecute each other about.”

“Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State. Above all, the citizens of a free nation should honor the brave and independent man - the man of stainless i...”

“There are so many societies, so many churches, so many -isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career.”

“The government, in my judgment, cannot create money; the government can give its note, like an individual, and the prospect of its being paid determines its value.”

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

“Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight.”

“The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue - or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes.”

“Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to protect the rights of man, I am a rebel. Wherever the sword of rebellion is drawn to give man liberty, to clothe him in all his just rights, I am...”

“The doctrine of immortality rests upon human affection. We love; therefore, we wish to live.”

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

“The truth is that nearly everybody is right about some things and wrong about most things; and if a man's testimony is not to be taken until he is right on every subject, witnesses will be e...”

“Kindness is the sunshine in which virtue grows.”

“Man never had an idea - man will never have an idea, except those supplied to him by his surroundings. Every idea in the world that man has came to him by nature.”

“The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down.”

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

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

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

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