Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

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

If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.

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

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

If we are to achieve richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

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

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

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.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to allow his vision wherever it takes him.

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.

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

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

Tolerance is giving to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly two be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

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

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

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

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

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.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

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.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

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