People thinking for themselves have more energy in their voice, than any government, which it is possible for human wisdom to invent; and every government not aware of this sacred truth will, at some period, be suddenly overturned.

No man chooses evil because it's evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.

For any kind of reading I think better than leaving a blank still a blank, because the mind must receive a degree of enlargement and obtain a little strength by a slight exertion of its thinking powers; besides, even the productions that are only addressed to the imagination, raise the reader a little above the gross gratification of appetites, to which the mind has not given a shade of delicacy.

A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.

The birthright of man ... is such a degree of liberty, civil and religious, as is compatible with the liberty of every other individual with whom he is united in a social compact.

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.