Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

Emancipation is the demand of civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue.

I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.

Nor was it only from the millions of slaves that chains had been removed; the whole nation had been in bondage; free speech had been suppressed.

Liberation is not deliverance.

I am the law. I am over the slave owners that used to be over me. I am their mayor.

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom on those who are not free.

If the Union should not be perpetual, nor the American name be synonymous with that of liberty in all coming time, slavery is at once the cause, the crime, and the avenger.

Neither God, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical, that promise success .... Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties.... Let your motto be resistance, resistance, resistance!

A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own choice, is often the means of their regeneration.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Inhale our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country, and their shackles fall!

Emancipation from every kind of bondage is my principle.

O THOU great Wrong, that, through the slow-paced years, Didst hold thy millions fettered, and didst wield The scourge that drove the laborer to the field, And look with stony eye on human tears, Thy cruel reign is o'er;

… it would be perfectly right for anyone to interfere with you so far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage.

I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom

I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom.

Once a man has tasted freedom he will never be content to be a slave.

Freedom is best, I tell thee true, of all things to be won. Then never live within the Bond of Slavery.

Your thoughts and your actions are fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. I, on the other hand, brought you freedom. Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible. So, fear your captors, your masters. Don't waste your time and your power fearing me.

To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony.

Do not help your jailers to pretend that their jail is your natural state of existence.

Not only was I not born to be a slave; I was not born to hope to become the equal of the slave master.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery," said I, "still thou art a bitter draught.

It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to enslave a people that wants to remain free.

In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.