Quotes of possible interest

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of
Pennsylvania, 1759.

[W]hat country can preserve its liberties, if its
rulers are not warned from time to time that [the]
people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take
arms...The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time
to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. --
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to
protect liberty when the government's purposes are
beneficient...The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in
insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but
without understanding." -- Supreme Court Justice Louis
Brandeis

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is
force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful
master. Never for a moment should it be left to
irresponsible action." -- George Washington, in a
speech of January 7, 1790

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable
on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept
alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but
better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a
little rebellion now and then. -- Thomas Jefferson,
letter to Abigail Adams, 1787

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty.
Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.
Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright
force. Whenever you give up that force, you are
inevitably ruined." -- Patrick Henry, speech of June 5
1788

A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for,
nothing which he cares about more than he does about
his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no
chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the
exertions of better men than himself. -- John Stuart
Mill, writing on the U.S. Civil War in 1862

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get
yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days
is to go about repeating the very phrases which our
founding fathers used in the great struggle for
independence. -- Attributed to Charles Austin Beard
(1874-1948)

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every
assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say
that the Constitution was made to guard the people
against the dangers of good intentions. There are men
in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to
govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean
to be masters. -- Daniel Webster

Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils. --
General George Stark

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of
its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be
better to live under robber barons than under
omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty
may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be
satiated; but those who torment us for our own good
will torment us without end, for they do so with the
approval of their consciences. -- C. S. Lewis

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on
our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the
first duty of citizens and one of the noblest
characteristics of the late Revolution. The freemen of
America did not wait till usurped power had
strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the
question in precedents. They saw all the consequences
in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by
denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much
... to forget it -- James Madison.

The price of liberty is, always has been, and always
will be blood. The person who is not willing to die for
his liberty has already lost it to the first scoundrel
who is willing to risk dying to violate that person's
liberty. Are you free? -- Andrew Ford

All governments are more or less combinations against
the people. . .and as rulers have no more virtue than
the ruled. . . the power of government can only be kept
within its constituted bounds by the display of a power
equal to itself, the collected sentiment of the people.
-- Benjamin Franklin Bache, in a Phildelphia Aurora
editorial 1794

Never could an increase of comfort or security be a
sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty.
-- Hillaire Belloc

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did,
and it never will. Find out just what people will
submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of
injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them;
and these will continue until they are resisted with
either words or blows, or with both. The limits of
tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom
they oppress. -- Frederick Douglass, August 4, 1857

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by
increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the
first place -- Frederick Bastiat

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard
even his enemy from oppression: for if he violates this
duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach unto
himself. -- Thomas Paine

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as
cooperation with good. -- Mohandas Gandhi