We cannot perform our tasks to the best of our power, unless we think well of our own capacity.

Power is not happiness.

He has no right to his life when his duty calls him to resign it. Other men are bound ... to deprive him of life or liberty, if that should appear in any case to be indispensably necessary to prevent a greater evil.

If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.

If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.

Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.