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

Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.

We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past ... while we silence the rebels of the present.

If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.

It seems fair to say that while the moral standards of the nineteenth century persisted almost unchanged into the twentieth, moral practices changed sharply, and that though the standards of the nineteenth century persisted the institutions that had sustained them and the sanctions that had enforced them lost influence and authority.

Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change.

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