No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.

Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance of your critics and discovering the emptiness of their virtue.

I saw that evil was impotent—that evil was the irrational, the blind, the anti-real—and that the only weapon of its triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it.

Man cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.

That an error made on your own is safer than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the means to correct it but the second destroys your capacity to distinguish truth from error.

Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.

Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.