Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

There is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides.

Men are men before they are lawyers, or physicians, or merchants, or manufacturers; and if you make them capable and sensible men, they will make themselves capable and sensible lawyers or physicians.

The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Eloquence is feeling pouring itself to other minds, courting their sympathy.

One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.

A stupid person’s notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called.