“Everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all.”

Address to the European Parliament (2015)
Context: People thrive where there is mutual respect. Civilisation is built on it. Futures are better for it.
But co-existence must be made, and made again, in every generation. The common good is defended only by vigilance and action. This means more than security measures. Humanity must arm itself with ideas, with justice and with economic and social inclusion.
Today, these challenges have special importance. Our world faces an assault by terrorists with ruthless ambition. The motive is not faith, it is power; power pursued by ripping countries and communities apart in sectarian conflicts, and inflicting suffering across the world.

Civil Disobedience (1849)
Context: To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it. After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? — in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.

Cada uno es como Dios le hizo, y aún peor muchas veces.
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 4.

Granting court permission for Samuel Goldfish to change his name to Samuel Goldwyn, as quoted in Lion's Share by Bosley Crowther (1957).
Extra-judicial writings

Une société intelligente en aurait fait des gens comme tout le monde!
Trial statement

She Stoops to Conquer (1771), Act II

Samuel Johnson
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