"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws."
"I become irritated at the attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all knaves and fools."
"For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever, and tho' himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them."
"To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture."
"Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated."
"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace."
"The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection."
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
"Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul."
"Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe."
"...taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but that wars are raised to carry on taxes"
"Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island."
"Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise."
"When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon."
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall."
"An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot."
Those quotes are a thing of beauty. The Founding Fathers really “got it”, geniuses among mere mortal men.
“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
Very true.
I’m just a rebelling away on the internet, can you tell?
Not rebel. Secede.