The complete collection
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.
The existence of such a government as ours for any length of time is a full proof of a general dissemination of knowledge and virtue throughout the whole body of the people.
It is their power and majesty that is reflected, and only for their good, in every legitimate government, under whatever form it may appear.
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.
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.
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.
Surely the State has no right to cleanse public debate to the point where it is grammatically palatable to the most squeamish among us.
it is nevertheless often true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric
The constitutional right of free expression is powerful medicine in a society as diverse and populous as ours.
Liberty and law have marched hand in hand.
All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way
To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty.
Between subjection to the will of others and the virtues of self-help and self-government there is a natural incompatibility.
One of the benefits of freedom is that under it the ruler can not pass by the people's minds, and amend their affairs for them without amending them.
Only an unmitigated despotism demands that the individual citizen shall obey unconditionally every mandate of persons in authority.
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.
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.
The spectacle is exhibited to the world of a government deriving its powers from the consent of the governed and having imparted to it only so much power as is necessary for its successful operation.
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
She was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world
it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government
the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men