The quote database

Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen.

There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.

Bad local government is certainly a great evil, which ought to be prevented; but to violate the freedom and sanctities of the suffrage is more than an evil.

Melancholy is the condition of that people whose government can be sustained only by a system which periodically transfers large amounts from the labor of the many to the coffers of the few.

The most serious effect upon the poor comes when dependence upon the charitable society is substituted for the natural outgoing of human love and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree.

Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another's harm

Want of a common judge with authority, puts all men in a state of nature: force without right, upon a man's person, makes a state of war

Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.

The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land.

Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear.

It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law.

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

The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural.

Her power often gives her what she has no right to, but does not enable her to assert her own rights.

If ever any system of privilege and enforced subjection had its yoke tightly riveted on the necks of those who are kept down by it, this has.

How mighty, as to the outward, is that Power by which they are borne down, and oppressed!

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

The confirmed criminal is as much entitled to redress as his most virtuous fellow citizen; no record of crime, however long, makes one an outlaw.

Anger is not only a vice, but a vice point-blank against nature, for it divides instead of joining

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs.

Then let them eat pastry!

I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves

The many have always been enthralled by the few; and, monsters who have scarcely shown any discernment of human excellence, have tyrannized over thousands of their fellow creatures.