Skip to content

That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.

— John Hancock Boston Massacre Oration (1774)

Another quote →

More quotes by John Hancock

I have the most animating confidence that the present noble struggle for liberty will terminate gloriously for America.

Boston Massacre Oration (1774)

King George can read that without spectacles!

Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves.

Boston Massacre Oration (1774)

A well-disciplined militia is a safe, an honorable guard to a community like this, whose inhabitants are by nature brave, and are laudably tenacious of that freedom in which they were born.

Boston Massacre Oration (1774)

Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.

Boston Massacre Oration (1774)

All John Hancock quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Hancock (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.