freedom Quotes

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

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.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

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

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.