Great Throughts Treasury

"A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people."

"We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future."

"I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity."

"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck."

"One and God make a majority."

"Power concedes nothing without a demand… The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress."

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning… Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get."

"It’s a poor rule that won’t work both ways."

"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose."

"The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance."

"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet renounce controversy are people who want crops without ploughing the ground."

"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will."

"The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle... If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

"A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it. "

"Without a struggle, there can be no progress."

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. "

"People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. "

"To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker."

"The soul that is within me no man can degrade. "