Who is apt, on occasion, to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument.

I wrote because I could not help it. There was something that I wanted to say, and I said it: that was all. The fame and the money and the usefulness might or might not follow. It was not by my endeavor if they did.

it matters infinitely less what we do than what we are.

Even if their outward fortunes could be absolutely equalized, there would be, from individual constitution alone, an aristocracy and a democracy in every land. The fearful by nature would compose an aristocracy, the hopeful by nature a democracy, were all other causes of divergence done away.

The instruction furnished is not good enough for the youth of such a country ... There is not even any systematic instruction given on political morals: an enormous deficiency in a republic.

I would not exchange my freedom from old superstition, if I were to be burned at the stake next month, for all the peace and quiet of orthodoxy, if I must take the orthodoxy with peace and quiet.

School is no place of education for any children whatever till their minds are well put in action. This is the work which has to be done at home, and which may be done in all homes where the mother is a sensible woman.