Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Minorities are the stars of the firmament; majorities, the darkness in which they float. – Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)

Custom is, to think a handsome thing in private but tame it down in the utterance. – Mark Twain, 1907, letter to Harriet E. Whitmore

Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul. – Robert Ingersoll, Individuality