All quotes

To make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.

The South is brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.

The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press

The press and even the pulpit, in the main either by silence or open apology, have condoned and encouraged this state of anarchy.

It is an evil omen of the times that men have undertaken to calculate the mere material value of the Union.

Melancholy is the condition of that people whose government can be sustained only by a system which periodically transfers large amounts from the labor of the many to the coffers of the few.

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.

The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.

Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path.

For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary.

Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man's person, makes a state of war

Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm

Any broader view of this authority would effectively empower a majority to silence dissidents simply as a matter of personal predilections.

Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear.

The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.

A good despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras.

Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the individual citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority.

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.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

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.

Even the commonest men reserve the violent, the sulky, the undisguisedly selfish side of their character for those who have no power to withstand it.

Such increase is destined to keep pace with the growth of our population, until, without a figure of speech, an army of officeholders may be spread over the land.