The freedom of a government does not depend on the quality of its laws, but upon the power that has the right to create them.

Retain, even in opposition, your capacity for astonishment.

Strip the proud nobility of their bloated estates, reduce them to a level with plain republicans, send forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the workshops or handle the plow, and you will thus humble proud traitors.

I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom.

No government can be free that does not allow all its citizens to participate in the formation and execution of her laws.

The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conquerer.

I can never acknowledge the right of slavery. I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians - however dignified by the name of the Goddess of Liberty, whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant's lash, and the cries of his tortured victims.