The quote database

To me, a man has no master but God. Man in his authority is a sovereign lord.

The fact is that old age is respectable just as long as it asserts itself, maintains its proper rights, and is not enslaved to any one.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.

As members of the minority party, we do not have the primary authority to formulate the policy of our government. But we do have the responsibility of rendering constructive criticism, of clarifying issues, of allaying fears by acting as responsible citizens.

Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other, arising from their necessary and unavoidable relations; which rights and duties there is no common human authority to protect and enforce.

Such persons should recollect that without law there can be no real practical liberty; that when law is trampled under foot tyranny rules, whether it appears in the form of a military despotism or of popular violence.

Free trade in labour and equality of training, intellectual or physical, is essential if the organic aptitudes of a sex or class are to be determined.

The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement in the narrower sense is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result.

We gain our freedom when we attain our truest nature.

It is the function of religion not to destroy our nature but to fulfil it.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion

While the Constitution diffuses power the better to secure liberty, it also contemplates that practice will integrate the dispersed powers into a workable government.

Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people.

neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with the equal protection principle when a law or official policy denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature -- equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Government with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery.

The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it

The spirit of liberty is the sovereign balm for every injury which our institutions may receive.

Limited as are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in one of the departments.

We should make every effort to prevent humiliating and degrading prohibition against any of our citizens wishing temporarily to sojourn in foreign countries because of race or religion.

that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials

The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions.

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment , it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.