The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them.

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.

A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest - who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern - who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine - have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.

Hardly any original thoughts on mental or social subjects ever make their way among mankind or assume their proper importance in the minds even of their inventors, until aptly selected words or phrases have as it were nailed them down and held them fast.

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.

The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.