Quotes About Liberty

I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers ... We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the.

The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independant, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.

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

The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers

I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Freedom of the person under the protection of habeas corpus. I deem one of the essential principles of our government.

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

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.

And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

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

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

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

What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?… The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

This is the Fourth?

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.

God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. That government is best which governs least.

No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one ever will.

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

The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and governments to gain ground.