Robert Ingersoll

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Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899) was an American political leader and orator, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism. He was prominent during the Golden Age of Freethought.

Contents 1 Sourced 2 Attributed 3 About Robert Ingersoll 4 External links

Sourced

• Like an armed warrior, like a plumed knight, James G. Blaine marched down the halls of the American Congress and threw his shining lance full and fair against the brazen forehead of every traitor to his country and every maligner of his fair reputation.
  • Speech nominating Blaine for President, National Republican Convention (June 15, 1876)

• I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart—the best brain.
  • Liberty

• The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
  • Liberty

• Every cradle asks us, "Whence?" and every coffin, "Whither?" The poor barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions as intelligently as the robed priest of the most authentic creed.
  • Address at a child's grave

• We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for the dead.
  • Address at a child's grave

• Good-by, gentlemen! I am not asking to be Governor of Illinois ... I have in my composition that which I have declared to the world as my views upon religion. My position I would not, under any circumstances, not even for my life, seem to renounce. I would rather refuse to be President of the United States than to do so. My religious belief is my own. It belongs to me, not to the State of Illinois. I would not smother one sentiment of my heart to be the Emperor of the round world.
  • On refusing the Republican nomination for Illinois governor, from "Ingersoll the Magnificent" by Joseph Lewis

• Churches are becoming political organizations.... It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy -- making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind. Surely politicians could be better employed than in passing laws to protect the literary reputation of the Jewish God.
  • Some Mistakes of Moses, Section III, "The Politicians,"

• Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them.
  • Address to the McKinley League, New York (October 29, 1896)

• An honest God is the noblest work of man.
  • The Gods (1876)

• I suppose it can be truthfully said that Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.
  • Speech (1892)

• In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences.
  • Some Reasons Why (1896)

• The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future.
  • Lecture (1899)

• Justice is the only worship.
  Love is the only priest.
  Ignorance is the only slavery.
  Happiness is the only good.
  The time to be happy is now,
  The place to be happy is here,
  The way to be happy is to make others so.
  • Creed

Attributed

• A crime against god is a demonstrated impossibility.

• A good deed is the best prayer.

• A man is not moral because he is obedient through fear or ignorance. Morality lives in the realm of perceived obligation.

• Age after age, the strong have trampled upon the weak; the crafty and heartless have ensnared and enslaved the simple and innocent, and nowhere, in all the annals of mankind, has any god succored the oppressed.

• Belief is not a voluntary thing. A man believes or disbelieves in spite of himself. They tell us that to believe is the safe way; but I say, the safe way is to be honest.

• Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.

• Courage without conscience is a wild beast.

• Each nation has created a god, and the god has always resembled his creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved, and he invariably found on the side of those in power. Each god was intensely patriotic, and detested all nations but his own.

• Every library is an arsenal.

• For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.

• I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, blown and flared by passion's storm, and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.

• I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.

• If a man really believes that God once upheld slavery; that he commanded soldiers to kill women and babes; that he believed in polygamy; that he persecuted for opinion's sake; that he will punish forever, and that he hates an unbeliever, the effect in my judgment will be bad. It always has been bad. This belief built the dungeons of the Inquisition. This belief made the Puritan murder the Quaker.

• If I had my way I'd make health catching instead of disease.

• One good schoolteacher is worth more than 100 priests.

• Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.

• Prayer is of no avail. The lightning falls on the just and the unjust in accordance with natural laws.

• The Christians say, that among the ancient Jews, if you committed a crime you had to kill a sheep. Now they say 'charge it.' 'Put it on the slate.' The Savior will pay it. In this way, rascality is sold on credit, and the credit system in morals, as in business, breeds extravagance.

• The hands that help are far better than the lips that pray.

• The man who invented the telescope found out more about heaven than the closed eyes of prayer ever discovered.

• The old doctrine that God wanted man to do something for him, and that he kept a watchful eye upon all the children of men; that he rewarded the virtuous and punished the wicked, is gradually fading from the mind. We know that some of the worst men have what the world calls success. We know that some of the best men lie upon the straw of failure. We know that honesty goes hungry, while larceny sits at the banquet. We know that the vicious have every physical comfort, while the virtuous are often clad in rags.

• There are no Gods, no angels, no devils, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens the hearts and enslaves minds.

• Where is the soul? . . . I refuse to believe anything of that kind without proof. The idea that, as soon as a man's breath leaves his body, the soul flops out like a chicken's head and flies off into space to find a lodgment where there [are] harps and haloes. Too much for me.

About Robert Ingersoll

• What an organ human speech is when employed by a master.
  • Mark Twain on Ingersoll.

• I've just come to my room, Livy darling, I guess this was the memorable night of my life. By George, I never was so stirred since I was born. I heard [a speech] by that splendid old soul, Col. Bob Ingersoll,--oh, it was just the supremest combination of English words that was ever put together since the world began.
  • Mark Twain, to Mrs. Clemens, in Hartford (1879)

External links

• Works by Robert G. Ingersoll at Project Gutenberg

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