I don't want to hurt people's feelings if I can help it. I don't want anyone unnecessarily humiliated, but I say whatever stands between you and justice must give way; and if you have to walk over reputations — and if they become pavement you cannot help it.

In the presence of death I affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said against the superstitions of the world. I would say that much on the subject with my last breath.

If you have ever clothed another with woe, as with a garment of pain, you will never be quite as happy as though you had not done that thing.

We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death.

Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction.

On every hand there seems to be design to defeat design. If God created man - if he is the father of us all, why did he make the criminals, the insane, the deformed and idiotic? Should the mother, who clasps to her breast an idiot child, thank God?

Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter.