A true leader is constantly providing tools that enable independence.

God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: "This is my country."

Freedom is to be free from restraint and violence from others.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

What I wanted was to be allowed to do the thing in the world that I did best, which I believed then and believe now, is the greatest privilege there is. When I did that, success found me.

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

If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

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.

They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

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.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably gracious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Our task must be to free ourselves…by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others.

An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over ashes.

Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.

I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Howsoever you may repair it, a rift is a rift.

Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely enjoy exercising authority usually lose it.

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, butt in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is doomed.