The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

Self-Made Men are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box.

Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.

The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors.... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!

Civil war was not a mere strife for territory and dominion, but a contest of civilization against barbarism.