Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

Over one's mind and over one's body the individual is sovereign.

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study, and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

Next to selfishness the principal cause which makes life unsatisfactory is want of mental cultivation.

Indeed the dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution, is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into common places, but which all experience refutes.

Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.