Those who won our independence... valued liberty a...

Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.

Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.

Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law it invites every man to become a law unto himself it invites anarchy.

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions.

In fact, my courage and my bravery at a young age was the thing I was bullied for, a kind of 'Who do you think you are?'

To dare to live alone is the rarest courage since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.

Is he alone who has courage on his right hand and faith on his left hand?

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

You get to a certain age where you prepare yourself for happiness. Sometimes you never remember to actually get happy.

I learned from a very young age that if I pursued the things that truly excited me, that they would reward in more important ways, like happiness.