251
The vitality of civil and political institutions in our society depends on free discussion.
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252
The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves.
253
The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people.
254
Tyrannous exaction brings on servile concealment; and that again calls forth tyrannous coercion.
255
Her power often gives her what she has no right to, but does not enable her to assert her own rights.
256
If ever any system of privilege and enforced subjection had its yoke tightly riveted on the necks of those who are kept down by it, this has.
257
The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong.
258
Anger is not only a vice, but a vice point-blank against nature, for it divides instead of joining
259
What right have I to be free, that another man cannot prove himself to possess by nature?
William Lloyd Garrisonverified·No Compromise with Slavery: An Address Delivered in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York·February 14, 1854
260
While a slave remains in his fetters, the land must have no rest.
William Lloyd Garrisonverified·No Compromise with Slavery: An Address Delivered in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York·February 14, 1854
261
You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time
Attribution contested
No contemporaneous record of Lincoln saying this survives. It first appears in recollections published decades after his death, and has also been credited to P. T. Barnum. Even the wording is unstable: this is McClure's 1901 text, which differs from the version usually quoted today. Treat the phrasing as the compiler's, not Lincoln's.
262
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it
Wrongly attributed
Voltaire never wrote this. Evelyn Beatrice Hall composed the sentence in 1906 to paraphrase his stance on Helvetius, writing under the pen name S. G. Tallentyre. She later confirmed it was her own phrasing, not a quotation.
263
Then let them eat pastry!
Wrongly attributed
Marie Antoinette almost certainly never said this. Rousseau wrote the anecdote in his Confessions about an unnamed great princess; he had drafted the passage by 1767, when Marie Antoinette was eleven years old and still in Austria. The line was attached to her name decades later. Note the wording: this 1782 translation of the Confessions renders the French brioche as pastry; the familiar English form, let them eat cake, is a later translator's choice.