The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.

I charge [my sons] never to let the motives of private interest or ambition to influence them to betray, nor the terrors of poverty and disgrace, or the fear of danger or of death deter them from asserting the liberty of their country, and endeavoring to transmit to their posterity those sacred rights to which themselves were born

To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.

As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

A well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.