Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity's liberty!

Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.

What a glorious morning this is!

The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.

Man's rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.

If our Trade be taxed, why not our Lands, or Produce in short, everything we possess? They tax us without having legal representation.

The right to freedom being the gift of God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.