Without free speech no search for Truth is possible; without free speech no discovery of Truth is useful.

The House, being strong, should be generous ... but the constituents have a right to more than generosity.... The law gives me my seat. In the name of the law I ask for it. I regret that my personality overshadows the principles involved in this great struggle; but I would ask those who have touched my life, not knowing it, who have found for me vices which I do not remember in the memory of my life, I would ask them whether all can afford to cast the first stone ... then that, as best judges, they will vacate their own seats, having deprived my constituents of their right here to mine.

The word heretic ought to be a term of honour.

I cannot follow you Christians; for you try to crawl through your life upon your knees, while I stride through mine on my feet.

Idle and meaningless ... a form less solemn to me than the affirmation I would have reverently made.

Will any one, save the most bigoted, contend, that it is not certain gain to humanity to spread unbelief in the terrible doctrine that eternal torment is the probable fate of the great majority of the human family?

Liberty's chief foe is theology.