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The Legislative has no right to absolute, arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes of the people; nor can mortals assume a prerogative not only too high for men, but for angels, and therefore reserved for the exercise of the Deity alone.

— Samuel Adams The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

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Power

More quotes by Samuel Adams

The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.

It requires time to bring honest Men to think & determine alike even in important Matters. Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.

Essay published in The Advertiser (1748)

There is nothing so fretting and vexatious, nothing so justly TERRIBLE to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS.

It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

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