“What a man does by another, he does by himself is a maxim.” — Personal responsibility

"Public bodies feel no personal responsibility and give full play to intrigue and cabal."

"Social power resides in every individual. Just as you put personal responsibility on political behavior, so must you assume personal responsibility for social behavior. It is your job. You think poorly of legislator Brown not because he has violated a tenet of the Tax Reform Society to which you belong, but because hes voting for a tax levy is in your estimation an act of robbery. It is not a peace society which passes judgment on the war maker, it is the individual pacifist. All values are personal. The good society you envision by the decline of the state is a society of which you are an integral part; your campaign is therefore your obligation."

"There is no means by which anyone can evade his responsibility. Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a self-appointed elite of supermen. In such vital matters blind reliance upon “experts” and uncritical acceptance of popular catchwords and prejudices is tantamount to the abandonment of self-determination and to yielding to other people’s domination. As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His fate and that of his progeny are at stake."

"There is only one thing I do not want to fail to stress, that as soon as the ethical person’s gymnastics become an imaginary construction he has ceased to live ethically. All such imaginary constructing is equivalent to sophistry in the realm of knowledge."

"In a spiritual sense that by which a person gives birth is the formative striving of the will and that is within a person’s power. What are you afraid of then? After all, you are not supposed to give birth to another human being; you are supposed to give birth only to yourself. And yet I am fully aware that there is an earnestness about this that shakes the entire soul; to become conscious in one’s eternal validity is a moment that is more significant than everything else in the world."

"Freedom brings men rudely and directly face to face with their responsibility for their free actions."