Samuel Adams

The country shall be independent, and we will be satisfied with nothing short of it.

The Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. Those are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.

Driven from every corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.

I believe that no people ever yet groaned under the heavy yoke of slavery but when they deserved it.

The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.

There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

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.