Liberty

"And what country can preserve its liberties if it rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms. The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people...they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending to much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

"Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty , no happiness can be enjoyed by society."

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist the invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own."

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain control."

"We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather bed."

Government

"The republican government is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."

"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of a good government"

"I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive."

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

"So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done."

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

"A Bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."

"Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

"History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is."

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the guise of taking care of them."

"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people."

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of a good government."

"Mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms (of government) to which they are accustomed

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

"That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part."

"Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government."

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive."

"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."