Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

The hardest thing in the world is to stand alone. Your friends will not understand, will resent you, will want you to just stop it and let life go back to where it was. But you have to follow the quiet turning of your own considered conscience. It's a hard road.

I'm not going to be bullied or pushed around by the group of the day. You've got to have political courage. You've got to have your own inner beliefs.

I would rather be beaten, and be a man, than to be elected and be a little puppy dog.

It can be tough to stand alone for something you believe in.

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can’t. It’s important to stay the course. I don’t think I would have lasted this long if I’d listened to anyone. You have to listen somewhat and then put that to the side and know that what you do matters.

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one's own convictions - not obstinately or defiantly

Wanted: a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say 'No,' though all the world say 'Yes.'

I think it's really easy to just get caught up in what everyone else is doing, so I think the most important thing to remember is to be really strong in your own shoes. That is the main thing for me. The one thing that kind of gets in my way sometimes is when I'm a little too aware of everybody else.

Somehow, people get very nervous about leaving the comfortable life of rules behind and never take the chance to develop their own internal voice, to listen to their own consciousness.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

That said, your values will not always be the object of public admiration. In fact, the more you live by your beliefs, the more you will endure the censure of the world.

I would always encourage people of any age not to be so quick to follow other people's truths but to search and follow your own moral code and live by your own integrity, and mostly just be brave.

Sometimes it is necessary to be lonely in order to prove that you are right.

Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth - don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.

We have to stand up for what we believe in, even when we might not be popular for it. Honesty starts with being ourselves, authentic and true to who we are and what we believe in, and that may not always be popular, but it will always let you follow your dreams and your heart.

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.

Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your convictions.

Independence .... is loyalty to one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty to the general idols and fetishes.

The greatest man is he who chooses the Right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. I believe this greatness to be most common among the multitude, whose names are never heard.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values - and follow my own moral compass - then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

The world tells lots of people the light is red. You have to trust yourself and say, 'I think the light is green, and I'm going to keep doing this.'

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

Courage doesn't come by doing what everybody else says. Courage does by what you know is right.

Stay true to your own voice, and don't worry about needing to be liked or what anybody else thinks. Keep your eyes on your own paper.