The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
[Our Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The federal government is our servant, not our master.
Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master!
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty ... Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various powerful interests, combined in one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in banks.
That, in its essence, is Fascism — ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
or simply:
