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"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."
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government."
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
"Every generation needs a new revolution."
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."
"Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
"I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind."
"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."
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."
"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."
"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?"
"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape."
"Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society."
"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."
"Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence."
"Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it."
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."
"The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them."
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."
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