It's hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. Such communication has always been... one of the primary sources of progress.

The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.

Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking or economising

Everything must be free to be written and published without restraint.

The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings

There are no means of finding what either one person or many can do, but by trying - and no means by which anyone else can discover for them what it is for their happiness to do or leave undone

So natural to mankind is intolerance ... that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized.