'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Religion is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

She and I were bound together at the border between life and death. It was like that for us from the start

No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years.

Don't go into debt and don't spend a lot. It's not how much money you make, it's how much you spend.

Sometimes we make decisions about our life and they feel like the right decision at the time. No, they are the right decision at the time. But that doesn't mean they'll be the right decision forever.

Nobody takes things more personally than me.

[Lincoln in the Bardo] is not a long book. And that meant I could obsess over it and live in it both backwards and forwards and hyper-control everything.

It requires as much reflection and wisdom to know what is not to be put into a sermon, as what is.

Women say that my election represents a cultural break with the past - a past of sexism, of misogyny.

Alas! must it ever be so? Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go, And fight our own shadows forever?

The high stage of world-industrial development in capitalistic production finds expression in the extraordinary technical development and destructiveness of the instruments of war.