“Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions.”

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?

If a man is happy in America, it is considered he is doing something wrong.

We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

Nothing is so loved by tyrants as obedient subjects.

You should live in the world but remain untouched by it. You should remain in the world, but the world should not remain in you.

When woman has a newspaper which fear and favor cannot touch, then it will be that she can freely write her own thoughts.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

I think women want freedom. They want to be empowered. They want hope. They want love.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

People need to free their minds of racial prejudice and believe in equality for all and freedom regardless of race.

All I have to say is basically if performing, singing, acting, and dancing is what you want to do, then you just have to do it – no matter where it is.

I think bicycle has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.