The quote database

Fear is an instructor of great sagacity and the herald of all revolutions.

God will not have his work made manifest by cowards.

Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters.

Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.

with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact

With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations.

Indeed, the ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room.

Marriage is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age.

Again, in taking away our friends, death does not take them away utterly, but leaves behind a mocking, tragical, and soon intolerable residue, which must be hurriedly concealed.

Futurity is the proper abode of hope and fear, with all their train and progeny of subordinate apprehensions and desires.

Difficulties may intimidate the weak, but they act only as a wholesome stimulus to men of resolution and valour.

A man must so train his habits as to rely upon his own powers and depend upon his own courage in moments of emergency.

It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience

It is over the lowest class of mankind that government by terror is intended to operate, and it is on them that it operates to the worst effect.

By flight alone we cannot overcome, but by endurance and true humility we are made stronger than all our enemies.

Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.

My sensations as we approached what I supposed might be 'a field of battle' were anything but agreeable.

I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on.

It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him.

But if you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses.

There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them.