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.

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

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

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.

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

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.

I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

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

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

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact—it is silence which isolates.

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.

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.

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

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

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.

Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?

Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles in the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

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

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.

The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bond together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.

Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.

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.

The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.