Certain rights can never be granted to the government but must be kept in the hands of the people.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. Men are no superior by reason of the accidents of race and color. The are superior who have the best heart—the best brain.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Never cross a man, not afraid to die.

To change your mind and to follow him who sets you straight is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence.

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

This I learned in Auschwitz: There are only two races. The race of the decent and the race of the indecent.

America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the “common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.

Why has government been instituted? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason & justice without constraint.

We have more machinery of government that is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.

That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.

To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.