“If we take a survey of ages and of countries, we shall find the women, almost - without exception - at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power, in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness He has been at once their tyrant and their slave.”

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: The question to be tried by you is whether a man has the right to express his honest thought; and for that reason there can be no case of greater importance submitted to a jury. And it may be well enough for me, at the outset, to admit that there could be no case in which I could take a greater — a deeper interest. For my part, I would not wish to live in a world where I could not express my honest opinions. Men who deny to others the right of speech are not fit to live with honest men.
I deny the right of any man, of any number of men, of any church, of any State, to put a padlock on the lips — to make the tongue a convict. I passionately deny the right of the Herod of authority to kill the children of the brain.
A man has a right to work with his hands, to plow the earth, to sow the seed, and that man has a right to reap the harvest. If we have not that right, then all are slaves except those who take these rights from their fellow-men.

Some Reasons Why (1881)

‘Observations on Priestley's Emigration’ (August 1794), Porcupine's Works; containing various writings and selections, exhibiting a faithful picture of the United States of America, Volume I (1801), p. 169
1790s

1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), First Inaugural address (1981)
Context: If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government#S5CV0339P0_19381005_HOC_216 in the House of Commons (5 October 1938) against the Munich Agreement
The 1930s

Source: Why Men Earn More (2005), p. 191.

Pericles commenting the participation of Athenian citizens in politics, as quoted in Models of Democracy (2006) by David Held, Stanford University Press, p. 14. Book II, chapter 40.

In his address to the party workers on 12 November 1984 to spoil the machinations of terrorist, when he was elected to the post of the President of the Congress party, quoted by Meena Agrawal in “Rajiv Gandhi” P.74
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