"The people are the government, administering it by their agents they are the government, the sovereign power."

"The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough."

"Americans are not a perfect people, but we are called to a perfect mission."

"I cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid in a repository prepared for an Emperor or a King my republican feelings and principles forbid it the simplicity of our system of government forbids it."

"You can't put democracy and freedom back into a box."

"If happiness truly consisted in physical ease and freedom from care, then the happiest individual would not be either a man or a woman it would be, I think, an American cow."

"But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns."

"While it's really hard to do, at the same time, I'm escaping my body, which I really want to do. I'm living someone else's life. I get very intensely into the story, into the interviews and the research. I'm experiencing things along with my subjects. I have a freedom I don't have in my physical life."