The complete collection
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
with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact
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
If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
When the world was over run with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious rescue.
We have it in our power to begin the world over again
This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.
The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting its government.
Government with insolence is despotism; but when contempt is added it becomes worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery.
Thus, even as the colonists embarked on a course to secure their own freedom and equality, they ensured perpetuation of the system that deprived a whole race of those rights.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it
Wrongly attributed
Voltaire never wrote this. Evelyn Beatrice Hall composed the sentence in 1906 to paraphrase his stance on Helvetius, writing under the pen name S. G. Tallentyre. She later confirmed it was her own phrasing, not a quotation.
Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek,--the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire.
This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.
You can do what you want to do, and it is your right and privilege to follow the business or avocation which will be most congenial and pleasant.
The object of all life is development; and everything that lives has an inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining.
The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases.
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.
The spirit of liberty is the sovereign balm for every injury which our institutions may receive.
It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have intrusted power.
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.