A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.

When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.

If you believe in your heart that you are right, then you must fight with all your might to do it your way. Only dead fish swim with the stream all the time.

There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning!

Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.

In an average day, you may well be confronted with some species of bullying or bigotry, or some ill-phrased appeal to the general will, or some petty abuse of authority. If you have a political loyalty, you may be offered a shady reason for agreeing to a lie or a half-truth that serves some short-term purpose. Everybody devises tactics for getting through such moments; try behaving as if they need not be tolerated and are not inevitable.

I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.

If there is anything that links the human to the divine, it is the courage to stand by a principle when everybody else rejects it.

Discussion in America means dissent.

Say, Not so, and you will outcircle the philosophers.

In a dead religion there are no more heresies.

In religion, it is not the sycophants or those who cling most faithfully to the status quo who are ultimately praised. It is the insurgents.

It is more often from pride than from defective understanding that people oppose established opinions: they find the best places taken in the good party and are reluctant to accept inferior ones.

Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that mislike it, heresy, and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.

If a community decides that some conduct is prejudicial to itself, and so decides by numbers sufficient to impose its will upon dissenters, I know of no principle which can stay its hand.

Dissent and dissenters have no monopoly on freedom. They must tolerate opposition. They must accept dissent from their dissent.

Assent-and you are sane- Demure-you're straightway dangerous- And handled with a Chain-.