“In order to have enough freedom, it is necessary to have too much.”

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.

Instead of yielding to idle conversation it might profit one to cultivate silence and contemplation.

Freedom is to ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere.

The price of freedom is death.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

The cost of freedom is always high.

The best road to progress is freedom’s road.

How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!