My belief in free speech is so profound that I am seldom tempted to deny it to the other fellow. Nor do I make any effort to differentiate between the other fellow right and that other fellow wrong, for I am convinced that free speech is worth nothing unless it includes a full franchise to be foolish and even...malicious.

When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly. He is like a watch of which the most that can be said is that its cosmetic effect is good.

A man full of faith is simply one who has lost the capacity for clear and realistic thought.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.

Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.

It is the theory of all modern civilized governments that they protect and foster the liberty of the citizen; it is the practice of all of them to limit its exercise, and sometimes very narrowly.