Robert Green Ingersoll

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“The truth is that all great men have had great mothers. Great women have had, as a rule, great fathers.”

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

“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.”

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

“Freedom believes in education - the salvation of slavery is ignorance.”

“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.”

“We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.”

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

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

“Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner.”

“Courage without conscience is a wild beast.”

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

“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.”