“If there is to be any permanent improvement in man and any better social order, it must come mainly from the education and humanizing of man.”

Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.

Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes.

No man is a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend, or a good man just because he obeys the law. The intrinsic worth is determined mainly by the intrinsic make-up.

Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man.

I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor – anybody can do that – but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.

The nation that would to-day disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrong from its hostile and unwilling serfs.

I had grown tired of standing in the lean and lonely front line facing the greatest enemy that ever confronted man — public opinion.

The purpose of life is to live it.

Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either.

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.

It is just as often a great misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.

Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document?

Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.

Contentment may be the most powerful Financial Principle. You can give more, avoid debt, and live better.

Become a better person and be sure to know who you are, before meeting someone new and hoping that person knows who you are.

If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting.

It is often better to be restricted to necessity than unconfined in the measure of our desires: prosperity destroys more individuals than adversity ruins.

It’s better to fight because if you don’t fight, you can’t win. Besides, even when you don’t win, you can change the game.

Even people you hate deserve opinions. And sometimes they’re going to have better ideas than yours. Keep an open mind to everyone.

Anything you want to say about God you better make sure you can say in front of a pit of burning babies.