"Revolutions are not made; they come. A revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back."

“Revolutions never go backward.”

“aces love to be judged in two ways—by the great men they produce, and by the average merit of the mass of the race.”

“The agitator must stand outside of organizations, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, no party to save, no object but truth — to tear a question open and riddle it with light.”

“What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.”

“The best use of laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.”

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.”