Robert Green Ingersoll
Robert Green Ingersoll
Robert Green "Bob" Ingersollwas an American lawyer, a Civil War veteran, political leader, and orator of the United States during the Golden Age of Free Thought, noted for his broad range of culture and his defense of agnosticism. He was nicknamed "The Great Agnostic"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth11 August 1833
CountryUnited States of America
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Kings had their clowns, the people their actors and musicians. Shakespeare was scheduled as a servant. It is thus that successful stupidity has always treated genius.
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Man never had an idea - man will never have an idea, except those supplied to him by his surroundings. Every idea in the world that man has came to him by nature.
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Nothing has been left undone by the enemies of freedom. Every art and artifice, every cruelty and outrage has been practiced and perpetrated to destroy the rights of man. In this great struggle, every crime has been rewarded and every virtue has been punished.
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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.
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Roscoe Conkling was a man of superb courage. He not only acted without fear, but he had that fortitude of soul which bears the consequences of the course pursued without complaint.
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The Catholics of Maryland were the first people on the new continent to declare universal religious toleration. Let this be remembered to their eternal honor.
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The government, in my judgment, cannot create money; the government can give its note, like an individual, and the prospect of its being paid determines its value.
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The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have is to so live and so improve himself in heart and brain as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man.
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The great poets have sympathized with the people. They have uttered in all ages the human cry. Unbought by gold, unawed by power, they have lifted high the torch that illuminates the world.
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The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose the character of nations, the ideals of the human race.
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The religion that has to be supported by law is without value, not only, but a fraud and a curse. The religious argument that has to be supported by a musket is hardly worth making.
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The truth is that nearly everybody is right about some things and wrong about most things; and if a man's testimony is not to be taken until he is right on every subject, witnesses will be extremely scarce.
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Voltaire! A name that excites the admiration of men, the malignity of priests. Pronounce that name in the presence of a clergyman, and you will find that you have made a declaration of war.
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When men are prosperous, they are in love with life. Nature grows beautiful, the arts begin to flourish, there is work for painter and sculptor, the poet is born, the stage is erected - and this life with which men are in love is represented in a thousand forms.