On October 30, 1880, Ingersoll was introduced as "the Great Agnostic" by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, before a political speech delivered to a large audience at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn. In an unpublished 1881 lecture entitled "The Great Infidels", he attacked the doctrine of Hell: "All the meanness, all the revenge, all the selfishness, all the cruelty, all the hatred, all the infamy of which the heart of man is capable, grew, blossomed, and bore fruit in this one word – Hell." He opposed the Chinese Exclusion Act and supported a more lenient policy toward Chinese workers coming to the United States. Ingersoll defended women’s rights and opposed racial discrimination and capital punishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Ingersoll
Quotes:
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments—there are consequences.
Some Reasons Why (1881) pt. 8 ‘The New Testament’
I believe it was Magellan who said, ‘The Church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than the Church’.
‘Individuality’ (lecture, 1873); see Magellan
The only person entitled to use the imperial ‘we’ in speaking of himself is a king, an editor, and a man with a tapeworm.
in Los Angeles Times 6 October 1914
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