Robert G. Ingersoll

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. Colonel Bob Mountain in Washington state was named after him by the climbers who discovered the peak in 1893.

Quotations from Ingersoll

• A crime against god is a demonstrated impossibility.
• A good deed is the best prayer.
• 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.
• Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense.
• Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
• Every library is an arsenal.
• The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.
• In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences.
• 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.
• 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yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men.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. -- from Ingersoll's Some Mistakes of Moses, Section III., "The Politicians," in Works, Dresden Edition, Volume 2