“As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can’t have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.”

The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.

I have seen Americans making great and sincere sacrifices for the key common good and a hundred times I have noticed that, when needs be, they almost always gave each other faithful support.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

America is great because she is good.

We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man’s support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.

Generally speaking, only simple conceptions can grip the mind of a nation. An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex.

When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.

Life is to be entered upon with courage.

One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.

The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.

I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.

The very aim and intention of the democratical part, or the house of commons, is to secure the rights of the people. It’s very being depends upon those rights. Its whole power is derived from them, and must be terminated by them.

The worst thing that can happen in a democracy – as well as in an individual’s life – is to become cynical about the future and lose hope.

If democracy is such a good thing, let’s have more of it.

If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.

Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

Because of my parents’ love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia – first by Hitler and then by Stalin.

We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for, and that is, freedom, democracy and the fight against disease, poverty and terrorism.