It has always been a sentiment with me that all mankind should be free.

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

Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

I could not understand how any man could be so brutalized as to claim the right to dispose of the lives of others, nor how any man could be so lacking in self-esteem as to grant to others the right to dispose of his life.

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

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

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

For you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you.

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

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.

I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.

Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it.

Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.

You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.

Never was a government that was not composed of liars, malefactors and thieves.

I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.

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.

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.

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

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

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defence.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country.

Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.

Fundamentally, there are only to ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion — the technique of the army and the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation — the technique of the marketplace.

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really man it.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.

Racism must be opposed by all means that humanity has at its disposal.

We have more machinery of government that is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.