Category: Thought

A scoundrel will be a scoundrel, even with two university degrees.

I have not come here with reference to any flag but that of freedom. If your Union does not symbolize universal emancipation, it brings no Union for me. If your Constitution does not guarantee freedom for all, it is not a Constitution I can ascribe to. If your flag is stained by the blood of a brother held in bondage, I repudiate it in the name of God. I came here to witness the unfurling of a flag under which every human being is to be recognized as entitled to his freedom. Therefore, with a clear conscience, without any compromise of principles, I accepted the invitation of the Government of the United States to be present and witness the ceremonies that have taken place today. And now let me give the sentiment which has been, and ever will be, the governing passion of my soul: ‘Liberty for each, for all, and forever!’

William Lloyd Garrison, Speech in Charleston, South Carolina (April 14, 1865)

A man’s rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.

Frederick Douglass, Speech (November 15, 1867).

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.

Liberty, then, is the sovereignty of the individual, and never shall man know liberty until each and every individual is acknowledged to be the only legitimate sovereign of his or her person, time, and property, each living and acting at his own cost.

Equitable Commerce, 1848.

Judge not according to the orthodox standard of a system religious, philosophical, political, but according as things promote, or fail to promote the delicacy, integrity, and authority of Conscience. Put conscience above both system and success. History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.

Postscript of letter to Mandell Creighton (April 5, 1887), published in Historical Essays and Studies, by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1907), edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, Appendix, p. 505.

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

Punish the one who commits the crime;
Punish the evildoer alone.

Ea to Enlil, as related by Utnapishtim in Gilgamesh: Translated from the Sîn-leqi-unninnī version by John Gardner and John Maier (1984), Tablet XI, Column iv.

Pictured above: Babylonian Gilgamesh Tablet, British Museum

I would rather the man who presents something for my consideration subject me to a zephyr of truth and a gentle breeze of responsibility rather than blow me down with a curtain of hot wind.