Using fear as a form of submission is the tale of a false leader.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

Duty, honor, country. Those three hallowed words dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.

Oh, I offended you with my opinion? You should hear the the ones I keep to myself.

Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for a trickster and catch him at first attempt, but beware of an honest man.

Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even dearth is one of the things that Nature wills.

I must be a mermaid, I have no fear of depths, and a great fear of shallow living.

The progression of emancipation of any class usually, if not always, takes place through the efforts of individuals of that class.

History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace, and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

When even one American, who has done nothing wrong, is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.

If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man's mind.

The period is now arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the right of the people to peacefully to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. -First Amendment

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly two be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

A leader who does not take advice is not a leader.

The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future, too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to speak.

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a life.

To educate in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind's last chance between chaos and community.

Let no guilty man escape, if it can be avoided. No personal considerations should stand in the way of performing a public duty.

The greatest kindness one can render to any man is leading him to truth.

If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.

My prayer is that when I die, all hell rejoices that I am out of the fight.

Only 3 things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and under performance. Everything else requires leadership.

You find out the necessity of Liberty as you find out the necessity of air—by not having enough of it.

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

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act. . . . Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon the definition of liberty.

The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary rule of another man.

I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.

Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.

I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.

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

Racial discrimination is not a permissible solution... that can only weaken the principle of equality embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Equal Protection Clause.