All quotes

The interest of the people is that there should be full liberty of censure on every public officer, and on every public act or measure.

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way

A Sultan's favourite slave has slaves under her, over whom she tyrannizes; but the desirable thing would be that she should neither have slaves nor be a slave.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone

the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men

To me, a man has no master but God. Man in his authority is a sovereign lord.

If you want liberty you yourselves must strike the blow. If you must be free you must become so through your own effort, through your own initiative.

As members of the minority party, we do not have the primary authority to formulate the policy of our government. But we do have the responsibility of rendering constructive criticism, of clarifying issues, of allaying fears by acting as responsible citizens.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.

Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other, arising from their necessary and unavoidable relations; which rights and duties there is no common human authority to protect and enforce.

Such persons should recollect that without law there can be no real practical liberty; that when law is trampled under foot tyranny rules, whether it appears in the form of a military despotism or of popular violence.

Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be determined.

The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower sense is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result.

It is the function of religion not to destroy our nature but to fulfil it.

We gain our freedom when we attain our truest nature.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion

While the Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty, it also contemplates that practice will integrate the dispersed powers into a workable government.

Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people.

neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with the equal protection principle when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature -- equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Government with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery.

The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.