As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
For an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all.
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.
Naturally the common people don't want war. . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. . .
Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
The great object is that every man be armed.
Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.
Government is best which governs least
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress....This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate, you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
It doesn't matter what color, sex, religion, age, sexual orientation, etc., everyone should have the same freedoms and liberties.
...The Bill of Rights is a literal and absolute document. The First Amendment doesn't say you have a right to speak out unless the government has a 'compelling interest' in censoring the Internet. The Second Amendment doesn't say you have the right to keep and bear arms until some madman plants a bomb. The Fourth Amendment doesn't say you have the right to be secure from search and seizure unless some FBI agent thinks you fit the profile of a terrorist. The government has no right to interfere with any of these freedoms under any circumstances.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
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