America was founded on a single principle: Freedom. We are, ultimately, a nation for adults, built for people willing to accept responsibility for their lives for good and for ill. Indeed, the Founders were well aware of the allure of despotism. It is safe to be protected by someone else and to not have to make decisions about one’s own life.
What’s more, the Founders knew that true liberty requires eternal vigilance. They understood that even a limited government would constantly be looking for ways to acquire more and greater power over the lives of its citizens. We need no further evidence of this than the United States government of today, with a far greater scope than what the Founders – who rebelled over a small tea tax – would have been willing to tolerate. Liberty is difficult to obtain, even more difficult to maintain, and very easy to lose. This is what the Founders believed.
On Liberty“Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.”
– John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765
“Is life so dear, or peaceful so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
– Patrick Henry, Speech at the Virginia Convention
“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever.”
– John Adams to Abigail Adams, 1775
“There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage.”
– John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776
“The establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the Motive which induced me to the Field – the object is attained – and it now remains to be my earnest wish and prayer, that the Citizens of the United States could make a wise and virtuous use of the blessings placed before them.”
– George Washington to the Reformed German Congregation of New York City, November 27, 1783
“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
– Edmund Burke, Speech at Country Meeting of Buckinghamshire, 1784
“God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, 'This is my Country.' ”
– Benjamin Franklin, Letter to David Hartley, December 4, 1789
“Liberty and order will never be perfectly safe, until a trespass on the constitutional provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents an invasion of the dearest rights, until every citizen shall be an Argus to espy, and an Aegeon to avenge, the unhallowed deed.”
– James Madison, Speech to Congress, 1792
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Speech to the Pennsylvania Assembly, November 11, 1755
“Liberty is the power to do everything that does not interfere with the rights of others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of every individual has no limits save those that assure to other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights.”
– Thomas Paine, Plan of a Declaration of Rights, 1792
“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 to himself.”
– Thomas Paine, From The Writings of Thomas Paine, edited by Moncure D. Conway, 1795
“Timid men...prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.”
– Thomas Jefferson to Philip Mazzei, April 24, 1796
“I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.”
– John Adams, Letter to J. H. Tiffany, March 31, 1819
“Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to liberty, and few nations, if any, have found it.”
– John Adams to Richard Rush, May 14, 1821
“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, April 2, 1790
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel William S. Smith, November 13, 1787
“’Tis a Common Observation here that our Cause is the Cause of all Mankind; and that we are fighting for their Liberty in defending our own.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Samuel Cooper, 1777
“The people...are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right...and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”
– John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765
“It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case others.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush, 1803
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, May 27, 1788
“The fundamental source of all your errors, sophisms, and false reasoning, is a total ignorance of the natural rights of mankind. Were you once to become acquainted with these, you could never entertain a thought, that all men are not, by nature, entitled to a parity of privileges. You would be convinced, that natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator, to the whole human race; and that civil liberty is founded in that; and cannot be wrested from any people, without the most manifest violation of justice.”
– Alexander Hamilton, “The Farmer Refuted,” 1775
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.”
– James Madison, The Federalist Papers, 1788
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush, 1800
On Freedom “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”
– Samuel Adams, Article in the Boston Gazette, October 14, 1771
“The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.”
– Samuel Adams, Article in the Boston Gazette, October 14, 1771
“Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”
– Samuel Adams, Speech in Philadelphia, August 1, 1776
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
– Thomas Paine, The Crisis, 1777
“Our unalterable resolution should be to be free.”
– Samuel Adams to James Warren, 1776
“The human mind will some day get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2000 years ago. This country, which has given to the world the example of physical liberty, owes to it that of moral emancipation also. For, as yet, it is but nominal with us. The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory.”
– Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, January 22, 1821
“Remember, that in all countries where the freedom of the poor has been taken away, in whole or in part, that the freedom of the rich lost its defence. The circle has ever continued to constrict, till lessening to a point it became absolute.”
– Thomas Paine, A Serious Address to the People of Pennsylvania, 1778
“Let freedom be the mistress of thy heart.”
– Mercy Otis Warren to Don Juan De Padilla in “The Ladies of Castille,” 1790
“Political freedom includes in it every other blessing. All the pleasures of riches, science, virtue, and even religion itself derive their value from liberty alone. No wonder therefore wise and prudent legislators have in all ages been held in such great veneration; and no wonder too those illustrious souls who have employed their pens and sacrificed their lives in defense of liberty have met with such universal applause. Their reputations, like some majestic river which enlarges and widens as it approaches its parent ocean, shall become greater and greater through every age and outlive the ruins of the world itself.”
– Benjamin Rush to Catharine Macaulay, January 18, 1769
“Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.”
– Edmund Burke, Second Speech on Conciliation with America, The Thirteen Resolution, March 22, 1775
“It is impossible to conquer a nation determined to be free!”
– Thomas Paine, Letter to the People of France, 1792
“In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance.”
– Phyllis Wheatley, The Boston Post-Boy, 1774
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Wear none of thine own chains; but keep free, whilst thou art free.”
– William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, 1693
“Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! Receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
– James Madison, Address at the Virginia Convention, June16, 1788
“Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Maxims and Morals from Dr. Franklin, 1807
“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.”
– Thomas Paine
Founding Fathers Quotes on Why America's Revolutionaries Fought For Liberty and Freedom originally appeared in The Resistance Library at Ammo.com.
