What Caused These
Opinions?
… the supremest combination of words that was ever put together since the world began” and added “Bob Ingersoll’s music will sing through my memory always as the divinest that ever enchanted my ears… Except for my daughters, I have not grieved for any death as I have grieved for his. His was a great and beautiful spirit, he was a man – all man, from his crown to his footsoles. My reverence for him was deep and genuine.
– MARK TWAIN
[He] had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.
– THOMAS EDISON
[His] character was as nearly perfect as it is possible for the character of mortal man to be … none sweeter or nobler had ever blessed the world…the example of his life was of more value to posterity than all the sermons that were ever written on the doctrine of original sin.
– GOVERNOR CHARLES S. THOMAS of COLORADO
Robert G. Ingersoll was a great man, a wonderful intellect, a great soul of matchless courage, one of the great men of the earth – and yet we have no right to bow down to his memory simply because he was great. . . . Great orators, great lawyers often use their gifts lawyers for a most unholy cause. We pay a tribute of love and respect to Robert Ingersoll because he used his matchless powers for the good of man.
– CLARENCE DARROW
[His] name is in the pantheon of the world. More than any other man who ever lived he destroyed religious superstition. . . He was the Shakespeare of oratory – the greatest that the world has ever known…Twenty-one years later he wrote Ingersoll's granddaughter: I was the friend of your immortal grandfather and I loved him truly… the name of Ingersoll is revered in our home, worshipped by us all, and the date of birth is holy in our calendar.
– EUGENE V. DEBS
[Debs ran for President five times on the Socialist ticket, last in 1920. He and Ingersoll were poles apart on economic policy.]
Shaw [asked] me to tell him all that I knew about Ingersoll…he told me Ingersoll had exercised an influence upon him probably greater than that of any other man. – Joseph Lewis
– GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
I've heard the greatest orators of this century – O'Connell, Gladstone, John Bright, Spurgeon, James, Stopford Brooks, Wendell Phillips, Henry Ward Beecher, Webster, Clay and the stirring eloquence of our anti-slavery orators – but none of them ever equaled Robert Ingersoll in his highest flights.
I heard Mr. Ingersoll many years ago in Chicago. The hall seated 5,000 people; every inch of standing-room was also occupied; aisles and platform crowded to overflowingHe held that vast audience for three hours so completely entranced that when he left the platform no one moved, until suddenly, with loud cheers and applause, they recalled him.
He returned smiling and said: ‘I’m glad you called me back, as I have something more to say. Can you stand another half-hour?’ ‘Yes: an hour, two hours, all night,’ was shouted from various parts of the house; and he talked on until midnight, with unabated vigor, to the delight of his audience.
– ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, FOUNDER OF THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES
There was logic even in his laughter. He passed the cup of mirth, and in its sparkling foam were found the gems of unanswerable truth. Every variety of power was in this orator, – logic and poetry, humor and imagination, simplicity and dramatic art, moral and boundless sympathy. . .
The effect on the people was indescribable. The large theatre was crowed from pit to dome. The people were carried from plaudits of his argument to loud laughter at his humorous sentences, and his flexible voice carried the sympathies of the assembly with it, at times moving them to tears by his pathos.”
– DR. MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY, UNITARIAN MINISTER
[Conway's many literary and intellectual friends included Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin.]
He bantered us, challenged us, electrified us . . . At times his eloquence held us silent as images and some witty turn, some humorous phrase brought roars of applause. At times we cheered almost every sentence, like delegates at a political convention, At other moments we rose in our seats and yelled. There was something hypnotic in his rhythm and phrasing. His power over his auditors was absolute.
– HAMLIN GARLAND, NOVELIST
Short Biography
Robert Green Ingersoll is too little known today. Yet he was the foremost orator and political speechmaker of late 19th century America – perhaps the best-known American of the post-Civil War era.
