Rand Paul Quotes

I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.

You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.

Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.

My first recollection of hearing Wendell Phillips is from my college days, though of course he was always one of my heroes, and I may have heard him before, for we were an anti-slavery family.

I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for him.

...A Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell. So perish all compromises with tyranny.

Judge — thee hasn't left me a dollar, but I wish to say to thee, and to all in this court room, that if anyone knows of a fugitive who wants a shelter, and a friend, send him to Thomas Garrett, and he will befriend him!

Refuse to compromise what you know to be right for anyone or anything.

Those of us who always abhorred slavery as an atheistical iniquity, gladly we join in the exulting chorus of humanity over its downfall.

Whatever Lincoln's racial views, which are not totally modern and egalitarian in many ways, he believes blacks should have this natural right to improve their condition in life and slavery denies that to them.

It seems almost incredible that the advocates of liberty should conceive of the idea of selling a fellow creature to slavery.

I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.

Pick a sin we can both live with, is what I ask.

I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death--to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old.

So I like life and I like righteousness; if I cannot keep the two together, I will let life go and choose righteousness.

You can't assume if you do something contentious that people will be on your side. The moment violence enters the story, the story changes. Then the question is, "How do you face up to violence?" And then you have to have a no-compromise position. And this is quite simply a lesson we learn in the school playground.

If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.

If there is a God, there should be no slaves.

Death is a slave's freedom.

Slavery results from laws, laws are made by governments, and, therefore people can only be freed from slavery by the abolition of governments.... And it is time for people to understand that governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest man cannot and must not take part.

It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue

Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.

I wouldn't back away from what's right just because it's hard.

In my schoolboy days I had no aversion to slavery. I was not aware there was anything wrong about it. No-one arraigned it in my hearing; the local papers said nothing against it; the local pulpit taught us that God approved it, that it was a holy thing, and that the doubter need only look in the Bible if he wished to settle his mind.

Slavery will not be overthrown without excitement, a most tremendous excitement.