Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
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Liberty
Essential liberty, newspapers, and the men who would not be safe.
No man is free who is not master of himself.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Man is by nature a political animal.
The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.
The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.
The state has never any concern with truth, but only with the truth useful to it, or rather, with anything that is useful to it, be it truth, half-truth, or error.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.
Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government when it deserves it.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
The majority possesses a power that is physical and moral at the same time, which acts upon the will as well as upon the actions, and represses not only all contest, but all controversy.
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them.
All zoos actually offer to the public is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.