 A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. |
| There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home. |
| Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind. |
| The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. |
| The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses. |
| He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. |
| The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine. |
| The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. |
| As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. |
| Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character had abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it contained. |
| If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. |
| War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. |
| A man 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. |
| Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. |
| The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. |
| Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience. |
| It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. |
| That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time. |
| 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. |
| All good things which exist are the fruits of originality. |
