13 quotes
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality; an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it.
Letters to John Taylor (1814)
Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.
Discourses on Davila (1790)
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)
Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.
Novanglus Essays (1774)
Let every declamation turn upon the beauty of liberty and virtue, and the deformity, turpitude, and malignity, of slavery and vice.
A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.
Let the pulpit resound with the doctrines and sentiments of religious liberty.
A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
The die was now cast; I had passed the Rubicon. Swim or sink, live or die, survive or perish with my country was my unalterable determination.
But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
When people talk of the Freedom of Writing, Speaking, or thinking, I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.
Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right [...] to knowledge, [...] an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.