There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.

All discussion, all debate, all dissidence tends to question and in consequence, to upset existing convictions; that is precisely its purpose and its justification.

Here I am an old man in a long nightgown making muffled noises at people who may be no worse than I am.

A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few.

In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.

For myself it would be most irksome to be ruled by a bevy of Platonic Guardians, even if I knew how to choose them, which I assuredly do not.

There is something monstrous in commands couched in invented and unfamiliar language; an alien master is the worst of all. The language of the law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it.