“He who lets the world choose his plan of life for him has need of no other faculty than that of ape-like imitation.”

All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.

The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.

Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.

There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.

All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil.

Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.

So Long as we do not harm others we should be free to think, speak, act, & live as we see fit, without molestation from individuals, law, or gov’t.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore capable of being more valuable to others.

A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes–will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.

Photography is a brief complicity between foresight and luck.

Language is the light of the mind.

The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people.

The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.

In all the more advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves.

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

Do not resemble me-Never be like a musk melon Cut in two identical halves.

I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.

A man who wants to mutilate himself is certainly damned, isn’t he?

No man was ever great by imitation.

The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him.

The man whom nature’s self had made to mock herself, and truth to imitate.

There are things I am more interested in than the clone thing. How are they trying to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives? To what extent can they transcend their fate? As time starts to run out, what are the things that really matter?

There are three ways of learning golf: by study, which is the most wearisome; by imitation, which is the most fallacious; and by experience, which is the most bitter.