The lowest standards of ethics of which a right-thinking man can possibly conceive is taught to the common soldier whose trade is to shoot his fellow men. In youth he may have learned the command, 'Thou shalt not kill,' but the ruler takes the boy just as he enters manhood and teaches him that his highest duty is to shoot a bullet through his neighbor's heart - and this, unmoved by passion or feeling or hatred, and without the least regard to right or wrong, but simply because his ruler gives the word.

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.

There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.

The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.

I knew that it is out of the question to have honest, economical government while a few are inordinately rich and the great mass of men are poor. In fact, it is to be doubted if anything really worthwhile can be done until there is a fairer distribution of wealth.

I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor - anybody can do that - but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.

Education was in danger from the source that always hampered it—religious fanaticism.