...to bring a child into existence without a fair prospect of being able, not only to provide food for its body, but instruction and training for its mind is a moral crime, both against the unfortunate offspring and against society

All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

Belief, thus, in the supernatural, great as are the services which it rendered in the early stages of human development, cannot be considered to be any longer required, either for enabling us to know what is right and wrong in social morality, or for supplying us with motives to do right and to abstain from wrong.

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

The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.

Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.