“A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.”

“I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.”

“Walking is the very best exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.”

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”

“If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.”

“Was the government to prescribe us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.”

“There is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.”

“Dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.”

“No people who are ignorant can be truly free.”

“Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.”

“Everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue.”

“Self-love is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.”

“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”

“Freedom, the first-born of science.”

“Follow truth wherever it may lead you.”

“Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.”

“Of all machines, the human heart is the most complicated and inexplicable.”

“A machine for making revolutions is doing precisely the wrong thing at just the right time.”

“The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk. But divert your attention by the objects surrounding you.”

“Nobody is better than you and remember, you are better than nobody.”

“It is the duty of every American citizen to take part in a vigorous debate on the issues of the day.”

“Every generation needs a new revolution.”

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.”

“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.”

“Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.”

“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”

“The beginning of wisdom is a definition of terms. ”

“What a lot of things there are a man can do without.”

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”

“Slanderers do not hurt me because they do not hit me.”

“I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.”

“To find yourself, think for yourself. ”

“Know thyself.”

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”

“If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.”

“Where there is reverence there is fear, but there is not reverence everywhere that there is fear, because fear presumably has a wider extension than reverence.”

“They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.”

“One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.”

“Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.”

“I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.”

“How many are the things I can do without!”

“I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.”

“Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.”

“The hottest love has the coldest end.”

“See one promontory, one mountain, one sea, one river and see all.”

“A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.”

“By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.”

“When desire, having rejected reason and overpowered judgment which leads to right, is set in the direction of the pleasure which beauty can inspire, and when again under the influence of its kindred desires it is moved with violent motion towards the beauty of corporeal forms, it acquires a surname from this very violent motion, and is called love.”

“I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.”

“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. ”