I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.

The poor North has much to do with slavery. It staggers under its load and smarts under its lash.

I trust, that your readers will not construe my words to mean, that I would not have gone to a 3 o'clock in the morning session, for the sake of defeating the Nebraska bill.

I prefer, in a word, the republican system, because it comes up more nearly to God's system.

I welcomed the organization of the Anti-slavery Society.

We must continue to judge of slavery by what it is, and not by what you tell us it will, or may be.

Truth and mercy require the exertion - never the suppression, of man's noble rights and powers.

Our political and constitutional rights, so called, are but the natural and inherent rights of man, asserted, carried out, and secured by modes of human contrivance.

I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.

Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.

I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric.

I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.

As this is the first time I have had the floor, it may be well for me now to confess, that I am in the habit of freely imputing errors to my fellow-men.

But I love honesty, and, therefore; do I make great account of facts.

It is not to be disguised, that a war has broken out between the North and the South. - Political and commercial men are industriously striving to restore peace: but the peace, which they would effect, is superficial, false, and temporary.

The Southern slave would obey God in respect to marriage, and also to the reading and studying of His word. But this, as we have seen, is forbidden him.

There is one class of men, whom it especially behoves to be tenacious of the right of free discussion. I mean the poor.

There is room in our ranks for the old and decrepit, as well as the young and vigorous.

Let us tell our legislators in advance, that this is a right, restraints on which, we will not, cannot bear; and that every attempt to restrain it is a palpable wrong on God and man.

I do not object to the construction of rail roads and canals.

It, sometimes, suits the slaveholders to claim, that their slavery is an exclusively State concern; and that the North has, therefore, nothing to do with it.

The only ground on which a neutral State can claim respect at the hands of belligerents is, that, so far as she is concerned, their rights are protected.

To no human charter am I indebted for my rights.

But, although America cannot be justly charged with violating the rights of Turkey, Turkey nevertheless can be justly charged with violating the rights of America.

It is manifestly vital to the success of the anti-slavery cause, that the authority and influence of proslavery, especially of slaveholding, ministers should be destroyed.

God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power - of assuming God's place and relation towards his fellow-men.

True, permanent peace can never be restored, until slavery, the occasion of the war, has ceased.

I need say no more, to prove that slavery is entirely unlike the servitude in the patriarchal families.

Let the poor man count as his enemy, and his worst enemy, every invader of the right of free discussion.

But as well may you, when urging a man up-hill with a heavy load upon his back, and with your lash also upon his back, tell him, that be has nothing to do either with the load or the lash.

To say, that Capt. Ingraham violated the rights of Turkey, is nonsense.

When a good man lends himself to the advocacy of slavery, he must, at least for a time, feel himself to be any where but at home, amongst his new thoughts, doctrines, and modes of reasoning.

My rights all spring front an infinitely nobler source - from favor and grace of God.

True liberty acknowledges and defends the equal rights of all men and all nations.

The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

My esoteric doctrine, is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy... but from the popular to the unpopular is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.

Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

It is a thoroughly anti-christian doctrine that the Spirit of God, and therefore the life and governing power of the Church, resides in the ministry, to the exclusion of the people.

This Republic was called into being, organized, and is upheld, by a great political doctrine.

Optimism - the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.

For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.