Robert Green Ingersoll

“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.”

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

“If the guardians of society, the protectors of 'young persons,' could have had their way, we should have known nothing of Byron or Shelley. The voices that thrill the world would now be silent.”

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

“Fear, prejudice, malice, and the love of approbation bribe a thousand men where gold bribes one.”

“Every fact in the universe will fit every other fact in the universe. A lie never did, never will fit anything but another lie made to fit it. Never, never!”

“I think the man who eats the bread of idleness is under a certain obligation to speak well of labor.”

“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.”

“For the most part, we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs.”

“You need not go back four thousand years for heroines. The world is filled with them today. They do not belong to any nation, nor to any religion, nor exclusively to any race. Wherever woman is found, they are found.”

“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.”

“Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle, every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished.”

“Suspicion is only another form of cowardice. The man who suspects constantly suspects because he is afraid. Whenever you find a man with a free, frank, generous, brave nature, you will find that man without suspicion.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You have to change men physically before you change them intellectually.”