Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity.

A civilized society must count animals as worthy of moral consideration and ethical treatment. The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

I don't care whether animals are capable of thinking; all I care about is that they are capable of suffering!

Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.

As to the evil which results from censorship, it is impossible to measure it, because it is impossible to tell where it ends.