1
Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.
Calvin Coolidgeverified·To the State Senate on Being Elected Its President, in Have Faith in Massachusetts·January 7, 1914
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2
Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the source of human suffering, and teach us the ultimate way out of it.
3
Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities.
4
The concepts of "majority" and "minority" necessarily reflect temporary arrangements and political judgments.
5
Then let them eat pastry!
Wrongly attributed
Marie Antoinette almost certainly never said this. Rousseau wrote the anecdote in his Confessions about an unnamed great princess; he had drafted the passage by 1767, when Marie Antoinette was eleven years old and still in Austria. The line was attached to her name decades later. Note the wording: this 1782 translation of the Confessions renders the French brioche as pastry; the familiar English form, let them eat cake, is a later translator's choice.
6
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.
7
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.
8
Extreme altruism is no better and no nobler than extreme selfishness; both are mistakes.
9
What right have I to be free, that another man cannot prove himself to possess by nature?
William Lloyd Garrisonverified·No Compromise with Slavery: An Address Delivered in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York·February 14, 1854