“Man did not enter society to be worse off, or to have fewer rights, but rather to have those rights better secured”

“Nothing better for the hormones and worse for the heart than the right boy at the right time.”

“I'd rather have it right than right now.”

“Not only are animals unable to avail themselves of language to assert their own rights, but many fewer humans have a clear sense of kinship with animals than have a clear sense of kinship with other humans. Among beings with subjective states of awareness, animals are the untouchable caste, those whom human others would rather not acknowledge, let alone render assistance.”

“But if the things I believe are right and true, then what fear have I of challenge, for will those things I learn not simply prove what is? And if the things I believe are not right and true, would it not be better for me to know that and face it like a man?”

“[I]t is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or of any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up an essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”