We will not submit to have our own money taken out of our pockets without our consent; because if any man or any set of men take from us without our consent or that of our representatives one shilling in the pound we have not security for the remaining nineteen. We owe to our mother country the duty of subjects but will not pay her the submission of slaves.

All men are by nature born equally free and independent.

The epithets of parent and child have been long applied to Great Britain and her colonies, [but] we rarely see anything from your side of the water except the authoritative style of a master to a school-boy.

We are now to rank among the nations of the world; but whether our Independence shall prove a blessing or a curse must depend upon our own wisdom or folly, virtue or wickedness.... Justice and virtue are the vital principles of republican government.

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

I begin to grow heartily tired of the etiquette and nonsense so fashionable in this city.

That slow poison [slavery] is daily contaminating the minds and morals of our people. Every gentlemen here is born a petty tyrant, practiced in acts of despotism and cruelty.