Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit of him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned ... .

Convention is like the shell to the chick, a protection till he is strong enough to break it through.

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.

Reputation, like a face, is the symbol of its possessor and creator, and another can use it only as a mask.

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action.

It is enough that we set out to mold the motley stuff of life into some form of our own choosing; when we do, the performance is itself the wage.