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

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.

A man and still more the woman, who can be accused either of doing “what nobody does,” or of not doing “what everybody does,” is the subject of as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had committed some grave moral delinquency.

There is an imaginary circle drawn around every human being, over which no government should be able to step.

Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.

There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.

There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.

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

The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar; particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England

The study of science teaches young men to think, while study of the classics teaches them to express thought.

The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.

The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.