Before you can control conditions, you must first control yourself.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free.

Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.

Speaking generally, punishment hardens and numbs, it produces concentration, it sharpens the consciousness of alienation, it strengthens the power of resistance.

I'm not a member of any organized party, I'm a Democrat.

That is why we fight - in hopes of a day when we no longer need to.

Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.

A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.

As government expands, liberty contracts.

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.