“Every man has his dignity. I’m willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.”

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can’t deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge, observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies.

Distance is a great promoter of admiration.

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step towards truth.

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.

Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?

We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.

Poetry needs something on the scale of the grand, the barbarous, the savage.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.

A thing is not proved because no one has ever questioned it. Skepticism is the first step toward truth.

My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.

It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.

Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law. It is sometimes sneeringly said by those who do not like free government, that here we count heads. True, heads are counted, but brains also.

It’s going to take an act of Congress to deal with poverty and hunger, not only in this country, but throughout the world. We have the resources but we don’t have the will.

If something’s just, I’ll let myself be hacked to bits for it.

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.

When the heart is right, the mind and the body will follow.

Even if we all want you here, you don’t belong until you decide you do.

A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.