I want to tell you this: you cannot get the robe of hypocrisy on you so thick that the sharp eye of childhood will not see through every veil.
You cannot change the conclusion of the brain by torture, nor by social ostracism. But I will tell you what you can do by these and what you have done. You can make hypocrites by the million.
Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy.
When you go home, fill the house with joy so that the light of it will stream out the windows and doors and illuminate even the darkness. It is just as easy that way as any in the world.
The great poets have sympathized with the people. They have uttered in all ages the human cry. Unbought by gold, unawed by power, they have lifted high the torch that illuminates the world.
If matter cannot be destroyed, cannot be annihilated, it could not have been created. The indestructible must be uncreatable.
Perish the infamous doctrine that man can have property in man. Let us resent with indignation every effort to put a chain upon our minds.
Insolence is not logic; epithets are the arguments of malice.
You have to change men physically before you change them intellectually.
Every man should be the intellectual proprietor of himself, honest with himself, and intellectually hospitable; and upon every brain, reason should be enthroned as king.
Freedom has invented every useful machine, from the lowest to the highest, from the simplest to the most complex.
What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.
In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.
The American people do not like neutrality. They would rather a man were on the wrong side than on neither.
In spite of my surroundings, of my education, I had no love for God.
An honest God is the noblest work of man.
Beauty is not all there is of poetry. It must contain the truth. It is not simply an oak, rude and grand, neither is it simply a vine. It is both. Around the oak of truth runs the vine of beauty.
Many Americans do not understand that the officers of the government are simply the servants of the people.
If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.
No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.
