A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas.

Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

History is organized memory, and the organization is all important!

Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change.

If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.

The Americans who framed our Constitution felt that without freedom of religion no other freedom counted.

History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.

The greatest danger that threatens us is neither heterodox thought nor orthodox thought, but the absence of thought.

I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.

Our country is the only one that truly permits you to speak bad of your country, so you really shouldn’t say anything bad about it.

Louis Braille created the code of raised dots for reading and writing that bears his name and brings literacy, independence, and productivity to the blind.

The typical presidential staff resents the vice-president even more than they do the first lady.

Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.

weltschmerz: its the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be.

It's 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except there's just one degree, and Kevin Bacon is Hitler. Can I play? Let's see. Mother Teresa had a mustache. Hitler had a mustache. Mother Teresa is Hitler!

There isn't much room for an outsider point of view in print any more.

Great men have great dogs.

Don't accept that others know you better than you know yourself.