Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—­democracy to many.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

That sweet bondage which is freedom’s self.

I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.

Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.

Communities do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing—that’s the Lord’s test.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.

Power is so apt to be insolent, and Liberty to be saucy, that they are very seldom upon good terms.