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

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.

He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.

Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.

The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.

A great statesman is he who knows when to depart from traditions, as well as when to adhere to them.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

A profound conviction raises a man above the feeling of ridicule.

The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

Over one’s mind and over one’s body the individual is sovereign.

To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

As often as a study is cultivated by narrow minds, they will draw from it narrow conclusions.

In the long-run, the best proof of a good character is good actions.

With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.

The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.