Robert Green Ingersoll

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

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.

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.

There can be goodness without much intelligence - but it seems to me that perfect intelligence and perfect goodness must go together.

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 integrity, of will and intellectual force.

As long as we can get redress in the courts, as long as the laws shall be honestly administered, as long as honesty and intelligence sit upon the bench, as long as intelligence sits in the chairs of jurors, this country will stand, the law will be enforced, and the law will be respected.

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

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.

A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.

I say that no man can be greater than the man who bravely and heroically sacrifices his life for the good of others. No man can be greater than the one who meets death face to face, and yet will not shrink from what he believes to be his highest duty.

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

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.

When every church becomes a school, every cathedral a university, every clergyman a teacher, and all their hearers brave and honest thinkers, then - and not until then - will the dream of poet, patriot, philanthropist and philosopher become a real and blessed truth.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

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

He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success or the fear of failure - who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only victor.

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

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