There are no shortcuts in evolution.

What I have desired to do is to make the people of Boston realize that the most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties... They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty... that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.

The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles.

In a democracy, the most important office is the office of citizen

Repression breeds hate; hate menaces stable government.

At the foundation of our civil liberties lies the principle that denies to government officials an exceptional position before the law and which subjects them to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.