Inspiring
Liberty Quotes
"Let
us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the
world that a free man, contending for his liberty on his
own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on
earth."
George Washington ,
July
2, 1776
The
Constitution is not an instrument for the government to
restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to
restrain the government."
Patrick Henry
"Our constitution was made
only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly
inadequate to the government of any other."
John Adams
"Political interest [can]
never be separated in the long run from moral right"
"Can the liberties of a nation be sure when we remove their
only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people,
that these liberties are a gift from God?
Thomas Jefferson
"Any people that would
give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves
neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
A
wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from
injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free
to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement,
and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has
earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is
necessary to close the circle of our
felicity. Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural
Address.
"Government is not reason;
it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is
a dangerous servant and a fearful
master."
George Washington
"... God forbid we should
ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people
cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance
of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under
such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of
death to the public liberty.... And what country can
preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from
time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them
right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify
a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty
must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of
patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson Papers,
334 (C.J. Boyd, Ed., 1950)
