It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man. When a man begins to feel that he is the only one who can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions.

When those who are responsible for the leadership of State begin to move in villainous ways; when they begin to destroy the fabric of what it is that our nation is held together with; when they violate the Constitution of our nation and begin to do things that are false to our dreams and our hopes — it is incumbent upon every citizen by right, but also by responsibility, to challenge that administration, to raise their voice in vigorous dissent and to challenge the way in which the state is doing business. And those who fail to do that, should be charged with patriotic treason!

When a man is set in authority over others, everything conspires to rob him of his sense of justice and reason.

Do not believe that you alone can be right.
The man who thinks that,
The man who maintains that only he has the power
To reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul — A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.

The man who does not do his own thinking is a slave, and is a traitor to himself and to his fellowmen.

If a republic will stand or fall on the fate of any single man, it finds itself in grave danger indeed,

...[A] rebel who is inaccurate and mad is a traitor.

When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.

Only man can be an enemy for man; only he can rob him of the meaning of his acts and his life because it also belongs only to him alone to confirm it in its existence, to recognize it in actual fact as a freedom

"The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he'll fight and die for it."

[As quoted in <i>The New Yorker</i>, April 25, 2011]

There is no man more dangerous than one who does not doubt his own rightness.

Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason toward my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.