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.

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

Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

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

Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it; those who merely enjoy exercising authority usually lose it.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 overwhelming importance of the atmosphere means that there are no longer any frontiers to defend against pollution, attack, or propaganda. It means, further, that only by a deep patriotic devotion to one’s country can there be a hope of the kind of protection of the whole planet, which is necessary for the survival of the people of other countries.

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.

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.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

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

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.

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.

Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

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.

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

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

If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

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

Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.

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

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.

The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.

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

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: "This is my country."

America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the “common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

It never ceases to amaze me: We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

A society that tolerates intimidation as a means of settling disputes…loses its moral rights to exist as a social system, and its collapse does not take long to follow.