I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may long enjoy her independence and freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue.
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.
The country shall be independent, and we will be satisfied with nothing short of it.
There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.
One battle would do more towards a Declaration of Independence than a long chain of conclusive arguments in a provincial convention or the Continental Congress.
Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.
If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.
Give credit to whom credit is due.
It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.
We may look up to Armies for Defence, but Virtue is our best Security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where Virtue is not supremely honord.
I believe that no people ever yet groaned under the heavy yoke of slavery but when they deserved it.
Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.
Of how much importance is it, that the utmost pains be taken by the public to have the principles of virtue early inculcated on the minds even of children, and the moral sense kept alive.
Man’s rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection.
In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.
The diminution of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.
What a glorious morning this is!
We boast of our freedom, and we have your example for it. We talk the language we have always heard you speak.
All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.