Freedom ultimately means the right of the other people to do things you don’t approve of.

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.

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

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

True success, true wealth, does not come out of the barrel of a gun.

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

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.

Some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

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

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.

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

Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defense of their conviction.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Freedom exists not to do what you like but to have the right to do what you ought.

If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution—certainly would if such a right were a vital one.

It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. . . . I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

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.

One man thinks himself the master of others but remains more of a slave than they are.

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

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most impressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be saturated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.

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.

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

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.