To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.

Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

No person that has enjoyed the sweets of liberty can be insensible of its infinite value, or can reflect on its reverse without horror and detestation

He who is brave is free.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.

The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.

If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

God helps those who help themselves.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties.

That government is best which governs least.

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Abuse of power isn’t limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we’re not vigilant.

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

We stand for freedom. That is our conviction for ourselves; that is our only commitment to others.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worth it until we take it.

The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued into anarchy. And I am much mistaken, if experience has not wrought a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind, that greater energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the community

Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty…

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution – Revolution is but thought carried into action. Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.

Liberty is slow fruit. It is never cheap; it is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man.

Remember civil and religious liberty always go together: if the foundation of the one be sapped, the other will fall of course.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.