If there is anything that cannot bear free thought, let it crack.
Nothing but Freedom, Justice, and Truth is of any permanent advantage to
the mass of mankind. To these society, left to itself, is always
tending.
“The right to think, to know and to utter,” as John Milton said, is the
dearest of all liberties. Without this right, there can be no liberty to
any people; with it, there can be no slavery.
When you have convinced thinking men that it is right, and humane men
that it is just, you will gain your cause. Men always lose half of what
is gained by violence. What is gained by argument, is gained forever.
The manna of liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten.
Only by unintermitted agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake
to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
Let us believe that the whole truth can never do harm to the whole of
virtue; and remember that in order to get the whole of truth, you must
allow every man, right or wrong, freely to utter his conscience, and
protect him in so doing. Entire unshackled freedom for every man’s life,
no matter how wide its range. The community which dares not protect its
humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no
matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves.