The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born; that they are not superior to the citizen; that every one of them was once the act of a single man; every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case; that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better.

Society is frivolous, and shreds its day into scraps, its conversation into ceremonies and escapes.

I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.

Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.

Duty grows everywhere--like children, like grass.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.