We should not be surprised that the Founding Fathers didn't foresee everything, when we see that the current Fathers hardly ever foresee anything.

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

The American people...have a stake in non-conformity. For they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

In the long run [censorship] will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.

Its awfully hard to be the son of a great man and also of a half-crazy woman.

The decision for complete religious freedom and for separation of church and state in the eyes of the rest of the world was perhaps the most important decision reached in the New World. Everywhere in the western world of the 18th century, church and state were one; and everywhere the state maintained an established church and tried to force conformity to its dogma.

Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.