All quotes

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

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

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

The confirmed criminal is as much entitled to redress as his most virtuous fellow citizen; no record of crime, however long, makes one an outlaw.

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

Discourse no more of what a good man should be; but be one.

Find your sole delight and recreation in proceeding from one unselfish action to another, with God ever in mind.

No man can hinder the proper work of the mind.

Spend, then, the fleeting remnant of your time in a spirit that accords with Nature, and depart contentedly.

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.

He who experiments must, while doing so, divest himself of every preconception.

The thoughtful framers of our Constitution legislated for our country as they found it.

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

Shirking responsibility has never been a fault with which colored women might be truthfully charged.

With courage, born of success achieved in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we shall continue to assume, we look forward to a future large with promise and hope.

I have never had any trouble turning the page in the book of my life.

You are going to make mistakes — own them, make amends, and move on. Guilt and regret kills many a man before their time. Turn the page, get off the ride.

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.

The beauty of our system of government consists, and its safety and durability must consist, in avoiding mutual collisions and encroachments and in the regular separate action of all, while each is revolving in its own distinct orbit.

The great law of morality ought to have a national as well as a personal and individual application.