"As man develops, he places a greater value upon his own rights. Liberty becomes a grander and diviner thing. As he values his own rights, he begins to value the rights of others. And when all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized."
"This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself."
"This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance."
"Liberty sustains the same relation to mind that space does to matter."
"Call me infidel, call me atheist, call me what you will, I intend so to treat my children, that they can come to my grave and truthfully say: 'He who sleeps here never gave us a moment of pain. From his lips, now dust, never came to us an unkind word."
"When you go home you ought to go like a ray of light—so that it will, even in the night, burst out of the doors and windows and illuminate the darkness."
"With every drop of my blood I hate and execrate every form of tyranny, every form of slavery. I hate dictation. I love liberty."
"The theologians dead, knew no more than the theologians now living. More than this cannot be said. About this world little is known,—about another world, nothing.Our fathers were intellectual serfs, and their fathers were slaves. The makers of our creeds were ignorant and brutal. Every dogma that we have, has upon it the mark of whip, the rust of chain, and the ashes of"
"I swear that while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and to augment the liberties of man, woman, and"
"There is no slavery but ignorance. Liberty is the child of intelligence."
"The mechanic, when a wheel refuses to turn, never thinks of dropping on his knees and asking the assistance of some divine power. He knows there is a reason. He knows that something is too large or too small; that there is something wrong with his machine; and he goes to work and he makes it larger or smaller, here or there, until the wheel will turn."
"The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellowmen."
"What would have become of the people five hundred years ago if they had followed strictly the advice of the doctors? They would have all been dead. What would the people have been, if at any age of the world they had followed implicitly the direction of the church? They would have all been idiots. It is a splendid thing that there is always some grand man who will not mind, and who will think for himself. I believe in allowing the children to think for thems"
"The theologians dead, knew no more than the theologians now living."
"Whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous."
"When all men give to all others all the rights they claim for themselves, this world will be civilized."
"Every man should stand under the blue and stars, under the infinite flag of nature, the peer of every other man."
"When I think of how much this world has suffered; when I think of how long our fathers were slaves, of how they cringed and crawled at the foot of the throne, and in the dust of the altar, of how they abased themselves, of how abjectly they stood in the presence of superstition robed and crowned, I am amazed."