Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

I don't believe civilization can do a lot more than educate a person's senses.

Men need knowledge in order to overpower their passions and master their prejudices.

In the matter of learning, the difference between the earnest and the careless student stands out clearly. The same holds true in the mastering of passion and the weaknesses to which our nature is subject, as in the acquiring of virtue.

My intellect has always been more responsible than my emotions for how I respond to the world.

To unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matured, is a object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind.

Scientists and philosophers tend to treat knowledge, imagination and love as if they were all very separate parts of human nature. But when it comes to children, all three are deeply entwined. Children learn the truth by imagining all the ways the world could be, and testing those possibilities.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

I like the concept of teenagers and philosophy.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

Intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.

College professors are suspect because whenever emotion is in control, anti-intellectualism prevails.

Reason without passion is sterile, but passion without reason is hysteria.

[Logic and philosophy] were of no use, in the church or the state, in the cloister or the court, in peace or war, at home or abroad or anywhere but in the schools

The savage and women are not what we call intellectual because they are not taught to know and manipulate the materials of knowledge.

Intellectuals are people who manage the world in their head. They look at life and try to see some kind of truth, and if they cannot find it, they attempt to create it.

What we showed you was you can have analytic reasoning that can be passionate.