“All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.”
“Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”
“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”
“Originality is the one thing unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.”
“That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.”
“To understand one woman is not necessarily to understand any other woman.”
“What ever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called.”
“The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.”
“The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.”
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.”
“One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.”
“The most important thing women have to do is to stir up the zeal of women themselves.”
“I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.”
“That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.”
“The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.”
“There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.”
“All that makes existence valuable to any one depends on the enforcement of restraints upon the actions of other people.”
“A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”
“The duty of man is the same in respect to his own nature as in respect to the nature of all other things, namely not to follow it but to amend it.”
“We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”
“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.”
“But society has now fairly got the better of individuality; and the danger which threatens human nature is not the excess, but the deficiency, of personal Impulses and preferences.”
“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 for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.”
“There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do 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.”
“A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself.”
“The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.”
“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary 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.”
“Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained.”