You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt.

Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.

If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: thou shalt not ration justice.

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.

We lose the forest for the trees, forgetting, even so far as we think at all, that we are trustees for those who come after us, squandering the patrimony which we have received.

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

I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon law and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. 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. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no courts to save it.