“Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.”

“Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.”

“A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.”

“If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them--and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them.”

“Libraries are a kind of communism which the least revolutionary among us may be proud to advocate.”

“We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now.”