It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.

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.

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.

No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform.

It was while helping others to be free that I gained my own freedom.

Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.

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

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.

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.

Free choice is the greatest gift God gives to his children.

There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.

I shall work for the Republican party and call on all women to join me, precisely…for what that party has done and promises to do for women, nothing more, nothing less.

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.

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

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

Let us remind ourselves that it is ordinary people – men and women, boys and girls – that make the world a special place.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

We know of no culture that has said, articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

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.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions but follows religiously the new.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

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

The United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings.