“better to keep a good conscience with an empty purse, than to get a bad opinion of myself, with a full one.”

“An empty stomach is better than full and grief is better than happiness.”

“I am President of all the people, good, bad, or indifferent, and as long as my opinions are known, ought perhaps to keep myself out of their squabbles.”

“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”

“Anything was better than nothing. Half-full was better than empty. Ignorance was the lowest form of humiliation and suffering.”

“By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.”