Any participation, even in the smallest public function, is useful.

We have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavorable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.

It is given to no human being to stereotype a set of truths, and walk safely by their guidance with his mind's eye closed.

‎A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.

... the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking a part of the truth for the whole.

There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.

Induction is a process of inference; it proceeds from the known to the unknown.