I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

I don’t believe in guilt; I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person. And don’t judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free.

Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

If an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.

True friends stab you in the front.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.

If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

I’d read up on the history of our country and I’d become fascinated with the story of the Alamo. To me it represented the fight for freedom, not just in America, but in all countries.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to.

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don’t think much of the rest of the newspaper.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due.

When in doubt tell the truth.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.

Shun no toil to make yourself remarkable by some talent or other; yet do not devote yourself to one branch exclusively. Strive to get clear notions about all. Give up no science entirely; for science is but one.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

A man is the whole encyclopedia of facts.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can’t have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I’d rather not be in a cage. I’d rather be dead. And it’s real simple. And I think it’s not that uncommon.