“Great wealth often curses all who touch it.”

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?

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.

The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.

That is the difference between good teachers and great teachers: good teachers make the best of a pupil’s means; great teachers foresee a pupil’s ends.

Desolation is a file, and the endurance of darkness is preparation for great light.

Fragments of the natural method must be sought with the greatest care. This is the first and last desideratum among botanists. Nature makes no jumps. All taxa show relationships on all sides like the countries on a map of the world.

The greater the struggle the more glorious the triumph.

Beware, gentle knight – the greatest monster of them all is reason.

Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness. It is, Sir, the great grandfather of cuckoldom.

Expect great things, and great things will come.