I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.

If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar, and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?

Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

Let us make our own mistakes, but let us take comfort in the knowledge that they are our own mistakes.

It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing—that’s the Lord’s test.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

The self is like an infant: given free rein, it craves to suckle.

We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—­democracy to many.