You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.

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

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.

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.

When one remains silent in the face of oppression, one is on the side of the oppressor.

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

They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.

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

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

O beautiful for spacious skies, For Amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed his grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

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.

Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.

Liberty only survives when it is defended.

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.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

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

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.

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

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

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.

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

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.