The quote database

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.

paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell

Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen.

Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of the suffrage is more than an evil.

After becoming citizens they are entitled, under the Constitution and laws, to be placed on a perfect equality with native-born citizens, and in this character they should ever be kindly recognized.

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.

It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.

the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

The right to dissent peaceably, within the guardrails of our Republic, is perhaps our nation's greatest strength.

It is their power and majesty that is reflected, and only for their good, in every legitimate government, under whatever form it may appear.

In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.

No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.

Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

Any broader view of this authority would effectively empower a majority to silence dissidents simply as a matter of personal predilections.

The constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours.

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way

The interest of the people is that there should be full liberty of censure on every public officer, and on every public act or measure.

Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the individual citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority.

A Sultan's favourite slave has slaves under her, over whom she tyrannizes; but the desirable thing would be that she should neither have slaves nor be a slave.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone

If you want liberty you yourselves must strike the blow. If you must be free you must become so through your own effort, through your own initiative.