Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been.

Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.

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

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.

Never cross a man, not afraid to die.

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.

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

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

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

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.

It is a socialist idea making profits is a vice. I consider the real vice is making losses.

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

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

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

Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

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

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.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

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.

In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates.

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.

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.

If one but tell a thing well, it moves on with undying voice, and over the fruitful earth and across the sea goes the bright gleam of noble deeds ever unquenchable.

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason.

Truly, to tell lies is not honorable; but when the truth entails tremendous ruin, to speak dishonorably is pardonable.

Think lovingly, speak lovingly, act lovingly, and every need shall be supplied.

When angry, count to ten before you speak; if very angry, one hundred.

The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.