Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration.

Lovers who have nothing to do but love each other are not really to be envied; love and nothing else very soon is nothing else.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

The news and the truth are not the same thing.

Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation.

The consent of the governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.

The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth.