“Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary man that supplants us all in the long run.”

“But whether the risks to which liberty exposes us are moral or physical our right to liberty involves the right to run them. A man who is not free to risk his neck as an aviator or his soul as a heretic is not free at all; and the right to liberty begins, not at the age of 21 years but 21 seconds.”

“All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.”

“If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.”

“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.”

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

“[Man] progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.”