Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.