Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The despotism of custom is on the wane. We are not content to know that things are; we ask whether they ought to be.
How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of great minds is agreeing in the opinion of small minds?
The ne plus ultra of wickedness ... is embodied in what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of Christianity.
Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.
All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.
Marriage is the only actual bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the mistress of every house.
Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.
It is given to no human being to stereotype a set of truths, and walk safely by their guidance with his mind's eye closed.
Miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts and are wholly invalid as evidence of any revelation.
Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting, the first in importance surely is man himself.
Money is a machine for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously, without it.
The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.
... the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking a part of the truth for the whole.
Every established fact which is too bad to admit of any other defence is always presented to us as an injunction of religion.
The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power.
To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality
It is historically true that a large proportion of infidels in all ages have been persons of distinguished integrity and honor.
The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.
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.
A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.
The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest.
In its narrowest acceptation, order means obedience. A government is said to preserve order if it succeeds in getting itself obeyed.
The principles which men profess on any controverted subject are usually a very incomplete exponent of the opinions they really hold.
The object of universities is not to make skillful lawyers, physicians or engineers. It is to make capable and cultivated human beings
What citizens of a free country would listen to any offers of good and skillful administration in return for the abdication of freedom?
My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?
All errors which a man is likely to commit against advice are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him for his good.
Judgement is given to men that they may use it. Because it may be used erroneously, are men to be told that they ought not to use it at all?
The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice.
The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
Whatever helps to shape the human being - to make the individual what he is, or hinder him from being what he is not - is part of his education.
It is as certain that many opinions, now general, will be rejected by future ages, as it is that many, once general, are rejected by the present.
I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment.
Among the facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is Mind; and it is self evident that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind.
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 duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.
Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
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.
if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action.
No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them.
The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.
No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life.
So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it.