Our country is that spot to which our heart is bound.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace, and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.

A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Why has government been instituted? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason & justice without constraint.

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.

Evil comes from the abuse of free will.

When one remains silent in the face of oppression, one is on the side of the oppressor.

Some people are so used to special treatment that equal treatment is considered to be discrimination.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow.

What light is to the eyes - what air is to the lungs - what love is to the heart, liberty is to the soul of man.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary rule of another man.

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."

One man thinks himself the master of others but remains more of a slave than they are.

I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.

You find out the necessity of Liberty as you find out the necessity of air—by not having enough of it.

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defence.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.