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To make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one

The fatal poison of irresponsible power was already in her hands, and soon commenced its infernal work.

The absolute power of this distant old master had touched my young spirit with but the point of its cold, cruel iron, and left me something to brood over after the play and in moments of repose.

The plea for this outrage was then, as it is always, the tyrant's plea of necessity.

To enslave men successfully and safely it is necessary to keep their minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of which they are deprived.

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.

The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.

The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press

The South is brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.

The press and even the pulpit, in the main either by silence or open apology, have condoned and encouraged this state of anarchy.

It is an evil omen of the times that men have undertaken to calculate the mere material value of the Union.

Melancholy is the condition of that people whose government can be sustained only by a system which periodically transfers large amounts from the labor of the many to the coffers of the few.

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

The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.

Politics need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path.

Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man's person, makes a state of war

Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm

For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary.

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

Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear.

The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.

A good despotism is an altogether false ideal, which practically (except as a means to some temporary purpose) becomes the most senseless and dangerous of chimeras.

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.