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."