The only ends for which governments are constituted, and obedience rendered to them, are the obtaining of and protection; and they who cannot provide for both give the people a right of taking such ways as best please themselves, in order to their own safety.

Laws and constitutions ought to be weighed... to constitute that which is most conducing to the establishment of justice and liberty.

For violence or fraud can create no right.

[I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.

God leaves to Man the choice of Forms in Government; and those who constitute one Form, may abrogate it.

No right can come by conquest, unless there were a right of making that conquest.

Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by them be dissolved, and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked, if men might not justly defend themselves against injustice by their own natural right, when the ways prescribed by publick authority cannot be taken.