I was very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it [law of nature], as a resource to which we might be driven by Parliament much sooner than we were aware.

Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion... in private self-defense.

When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny.

Liberty, according to my metaphysics is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.

By my physical constitution I am but an ordinary man ... Yet some great events, some cutting expressions, some mean hypocracies, have at times thrown this assemblage of sloth, sleep, and littleness into rage like a lion.

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.