Robert Green Ingersoll

The more liberty you give away the more you will have.

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 am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot.

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

We can conceive of eternity because we cannot conceive of a cessation of time. We can conceive of infinite space because we cannot conceive of so much matter that our imagination will not stand upon the farthest star and see infinite space beyond.

Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand, neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak of truth runs the vine of beauty.

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.

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

What is it that distinguishes you and me from the lower animals - from the beasts? More, I say, than anything else, human sympathy - human sympathy.

Character is made of duty and love and sympathy, and, above all, of living and working for others.

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

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.

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.

Roscoe Conkling was a man of superb courage. He not only acted without fear, but he had that fortitude of soul which bears the consequences of the course pursued without complaint.

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

I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.

I regard the rights of men and women equal. In Love's fair realm, husband and wife are king and queen, sceptered and crowned alike, and seated on the self-same throne.