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

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

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.

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.

The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants.

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.

Wherever there is injustice, war, discrimination against women, gays and the disadvantaged, I did my best to show up and exert moral persuasion.

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.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

Either you will control your government, or government will control you.

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

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.

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.

The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion.

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

No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it continues the true source of national vigor and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.

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

I had long since taught myself to follow the inner voice. I delighted in submitting to it. To act against it would be difficult and painful to me.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.

College isn't the place to go for ideas.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

In school, you are given the lesson first. One the street, you're given the mistake first and then it's up to you to find the lesson, if you ever find it.

I've learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind.

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling to get adapted to my kind of fooling.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

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

I keep six honest serving men (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

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

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

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow 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.

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

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

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.

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.

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

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.