You agree that he could have been President, easily? Thank you. What a great man he was!
"Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), known as The Great Agnostic, traveled the country for more than thirty years lecturing to capacity crowds on more than twelve hundred occasions. He usually talked for three or four hours straight with no notes. His topics ranged from Shakespeare to Reconstruction, from science to religion. His biggest crowds turned out to hear him denounce religion and the Bible. He was no doubt one of the greatest orators in American history.
He was ahead of his time on social issues such as women's rights, birth control, and equality of the races. Frederick Douglass is said to have stated that , of all the great men of his personal acquaintance, there were only two in whose presence he could be without feeling that he was regarded as an inferior--Abraham Lincoln and Robert Ingersoll..."
"...I have an undergraduate and graduate degree in history and I had never heard of Robert Ingersoll until I became involved with the freethought/secular humanism movement ten to twelve years ago. Why? No doubt because of his unpopular views on religion. This is a testament to the power of religion to rewrite history. He also had no chance at a political office because of his stand on religion. So--this situation has not changed much over time, has it?
Eugene V. Debs , from Terre Haute, Indiana, was a great admirer of Ingersoll even though they were at opposite ends of the political/economic spectrum. Debs admired Ingersoll’s great humanitarianism and his sympathy for the plight of the working class. Debs said of Ingersoll , “He was the Shakespeare of oratory—the greatest the world has ever known. Ingersoll lived and died far in advance of his time . . . I loved him truly . . .The name of Ingersoll is revered in our house, worshipped by us all, and the date of his birth is holy in our calendar. . . . I have never loved another mortal as I have loved Robert Green Ingersoll."
It has been said that Thomas Jefferson preserved the memory of Thomas Paine and others have preserved the memory of Jefferson. "And so it goes."-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. We must continue to honor and preserve the memory of one of the true "saints" of freethought-- Robert Green Ingersoll .
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