Samuel Adams Quotes:

If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.

Topics: Country, Men, Liberty, American Voters, Civic Responsibility

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.

source: - Samuel Adams (1946). “Samuel Adams: selections from his writings”

Topics: Rights, Liberty, Together, Individual Liberty, American Revolution

It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Freedom, Majority And Minority, Minority Government

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.

source: - Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

Topics: Country, Liberty, Hazards, American Revolution, Civil Liberties

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.

Topics: Reality, Men, Law, Natural Law, Laws Of Nature

Nil desperandum, -- Never Despair. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.

Topics: Patriotic, Fire, Despair, Hope And Faith

The Constitution shall never be construed . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

Topics: People, Liberty, Citizens

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

source: - Samuel Adams' Speech delivered at the State House in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, August 1, 1776.

Topics: Love, Freedom, Patriotic, American Revolution, Servitude

Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote...that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.

source: - Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1778-1802”

Topics: Country, Offering, Voting, Human Society, Executing

No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.

Topics: Patriotic, People, Ignorant

Let us consider, brethren, we are struggling for our best birthrights and inheritance, which being infringed, renders all our blessings precarious in their enjoyments, and, consequently triffling in their value. Let us disappoint the Men who are raising themselves on the ruin of this Country. Let us convince every invader of our freedom, that we will be as free as the constitution our fathers recognized, will justify.

Topics: Country, Father, Struggle, American Revolution, Birthright

How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!

source: - Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1773-1777: 1773-1777”

Topics: Tyrants, Tools, Meanings Of Words

Hence as a private man has a right to say what wages he will give in his private affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their substance for the Administration of public affairs.

Topics: Men, Giving, Community, Public Affairs

If taxes are laid upon us without our having a legal representation where they are laid, we are reduced from the character of free subjects to the state of tributary slaves.

Topics: Character, Slave, States

In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind.

Topics: Mind, Age, Different, Christian Father, Founding Fathers Anti Religion

The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods,  are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.

Topics: Ideas, Government, Community, Unconstitutional, Utopian

He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man...

Topics: Trust, Wise, Country, American Constitution

Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.

Topics: Religious, Freedom, Religion, 4th Of July Inspirational, Fourth Of July Inspirational

The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance.

Topics: Perseverance, Fortitude, Deliberation, Circumspection

We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them.

Topics: Liberty, Events, Rebellious

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

Topics: Men, Liberty, Shame

Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.

Topics: Happiness, Country, Religious, Freedom Of Thought

I ... [rely] upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.

Topics: Bible, God, Religious, Founding America, Founding Fathers Religious

We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.

Topics: Bible, God, Patriotic, Kingdom Come, Patriotic Religious

Let no man thirst for good beer.

Topics: Beer, Men, Thirst, Brewing, Funny Beer

Principally, and first of all, I resign my soul to the Almighty Being who gave it, and my body I commit to the dust, relying on the merits of Jesus Christ for the pardon of my sins.

Topics: Jesus, Dust, Soul, Founding Fathers Christian

It is therefore recommended... to set apart Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor.

Topics: Grateful, Heart, Voice, Thanksgiving Day, Benefactors

All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.

source: - Samuel Adams (1906). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

Topics: Truth, Liberty, Politics, Freedom Liberty, Forefathers

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.

Topics: Country, Struggle, Patriotic

The right to freedom is the gift of God Almighty....The rights of the Colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading, and carefully studying the institutes of the great Lawgiver and head of the Christian Church: which are to be found clearly written and promuligated in the New Testament.

Topics: Bible, God, Christian, Christian Church, Colonists

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

Topics: Political, Feelings, Liberty

Were the talents and virtues which heaven has bestowed on men given merely to make them more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all?

Topics: Ambition, Equality, Men

Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.

Topics: Religion, Liberty, Foundation, Good Moral, Christian Morality

[T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all . . . are essential to the well-being of a family.

Topics: Family, Government, Essentials

Before the formation of this Constitution it had been affirmed as a self evident truth, in the Declaration of Independence, very deliberately made by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that 'all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights' This declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all the States in the Union & has never been disannuled. May we not from hence conclude, that the doctrine of Liberty and Equality is an article in the political creed of the United States.

Topics: Men, Rights, Self, Liberty And Equality, Unalienable Rights

If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.

source: - Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

Topics: Law, Yield, Giving

It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue

source: - Massachusetts Historical Society, John Adams, Samuel Adams, James Warren (1917). “Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814”

Topics: Liberty, Causes, Minorities

If virtue & knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great security.

Topics: People, Liberty, Virtue

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

Topics: Patriotic, America, People, Founding, Our Founding Fathers

[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.

Topics: Law, People, Liberty

Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.

Topics: Character, Patriotic, Men, Voting Founding Fathers

If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.

Topics: Perseverance, Men, Simplicity, Supreme Being

The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.

Topics: Character, Men, Curious, Not Voting, Voting Founding Fathers

What a man has honestly acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely give, but cannot be taken from him without his consent.

Topics: Taken, Men, Giving

The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people; then shall we both deserve and enjoy it. While on the other hand, if we are universally vicious and debauched in our manners, though the form of our Constitution carries the face of the most exalted freedom, we shall in reality be the most abject slaves.

Topics: Reality, Hands, People

And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless necessary for the defense of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions.

Topics: Army, Rights, People, Founding Fathers Gun, Founding Fathers Second Amendment

He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all... Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.

Topics: Men, Made, Obvious

In short, it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property.

Topics: Mean, Men, Rights, Power Of One, Natural Rights

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom," it is a very serious consideration ... that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event.

source: - Samuel Adams (1906). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

Topics: Perseverance, Rights, Suffering, Circumspection

I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may long enjoy her independence and freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue.

Topics: Country, Independent, Long

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.

Topics: America, Enemy, Liberty

'Revelation assures us that 'righteousness exalteth a nation.' Communities are dealt with in this world by the wise and just Ruler of the Universe. He rewards or punishes them according to their general character. The diminution of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.

source: - Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1773-1777: 1773-1777”

Topics: Wise, Character, Long

It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin'd to destroy the people's liberties, practice every art to poison their morals.

source: - Samuel Adams (1906). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1770-1773”

Topics: Country, Art, Fall, Rise And Fall

In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.

source: - John Adams' Inaugural Address, avalon.law.yale.edu. March 4, 1797.

Topics: Independent, Ideas, Sight

Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, in matters spiritual and temporal is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to by the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature, as well as by the laws of nations and all well-grounded and municipal laws, which must have their foundation in the former.

Topics: Spiritual, Men, Law

The eyes of mankind will be upon you to see whether the Government, which is now more popular than it has been for many years past, will be productive of more virtue moral and political. We may look up to Armies for our Defense, but Virtue is our best Security. It is not possible that any State should long remain free, where Virtue is not supremely honored.

Topics: Eye, Army, Past, Years Past

We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection

Topics: Heaven, Protection, Abandoned

It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail.

Topics: Country, Ignorance, Tyrants

We boast of our freedom, and we have your example for it. We talk the language we have always heard you speak.

Topics: Revolution, Example, Language

But there are some persons who wouldpersuade the people never to make use of their constitutional rights.

Topics: Rights, People, Use

I firmly believe that the benevolent Creator designed the republican Form of Government for Man.

Topics: Believe, Men, Republican

In a state of tranquility, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny.

Topics: Art, War, Luxury

It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them.

Topics: Army, Rights, People, Invading

We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them. Mankind are governed more by their feeling than by reason. Events which excite those feelings will produce wonderful effects.

Topics: Business, Feelings, Events

The next step may be fatal to us. Let us then act like wise men, calmly look around us and consider what is best to be done...Let associations and combinations be everywhere set up to consult and recover our just rights.

Topics: Wise, Men, Rights

He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.

Topics: Country, Men, Feelings, Moral Obligation, Virtuous Life

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

Topics: Land, Why Not, Produce

What has commonly been called rebellion has more often been nothing but a manly and glorious struggle in opposition to the lawless power of rebellious kings and princes.

Topics: Kings, Struggle, Power, Kings And Princes

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....

Topics: Freedom, Men, Slave, Security And Liberty

[M]en will be free no longer then while they remain virtuous.

Topics: Liberty, Virtue, Virtuous

All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.

Topics: Religious, Men, Long, Colonists

Every one knows that the exercise of military power is forever dangerous to civil rights; and we have had recent instances of violences that have been offer'd to private subjects....

Topics: Military, Exercise, Rights

The name of the Lord (says the Scripture) is a strong tower; thither the righteous flee and are safe (Proverbs 18:10). Let us secure His favor and He will lead us through the journey of this life and at length receive us to a better.

Topics: Bible, God, Religious, Us History

I cannot however help repeating Piety, because I think it indispensible. Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security.

Topics: Thinking, Ornaments, Helping

And if we now cast our eyes over the nations of the earth, we shall find that, instead of possessing the pure religion of the Gospel, they may be divided either into infidels, who deny the truth; or politicians who make religion a stalking horse for their ambition; or professors, who walk in the trammels of orthodoxy, and are more attentive to traditions and ordinances of men than to the oracles of truth.

Topics: Horse, Ambition, Eye, Infidel

A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Such power should be watched with a jealous eye.

Topics: Jealous, Eye, Army

I believe that no people ever yet groaned under the heavy yoke of slavery but when they deserved it.

Topics: Believe, People, Yoke, Presumptuous, Invaders

We may look up to Armies for Defence, but Virtue is our best Security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where Virtue is not supremely honord.

Topics: Army, Long, Looks

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; second, to liberty; third, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of ... the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and ernter into another.... Now what liberty can there be where property is taken away without consent?

Topics: Religious, Taken, Men

If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of Almighty God, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.

Topics: Giving Up, Mistake, Men

What a glorious morning this is!

Topics: Morning, Revolution, American Revolution

There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.

Topics: Suicide, Suicidal, Democracy

Our unalterable resolution would be to be free. They have attempted to subdue us by force, but God be praised! in vain. Their arts may be more dangerous then their arms. Let us then renounce all treaty with them upon any score but that of total separation, and under God trust our cause to our swords.

Topics: Art, Would Be, May

Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!

Topics: Hands, May, Down And

The diminution of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.

Topics: Long, Liberty, Extinction

Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity... and leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.

Topics: Girl, Christian, Boys, Boy And Girl

It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.

Topics: Loyalty, Mistake, Men

And if a minister shall usurp the supreme and absolute govern ment of America, and set up his instructions as laws in the colonies, and their Governors shall be so weak or so wicked, as for the sake of keeping their places, to be made the instruments in putting them in execu tion, who will presume to say that the people have not a right, or that it is not their indispensible duty to God and their Country, by all rational means in their power to RESIST THEM.

Topics: Country, Mean, Law, Duty To God

Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death.

Topics: Kings, Men, Law

Of how much importance is it, that the utmost pains be taken by the public to have the principles of virtue early inculcated on the minds even of children, and the moral sense kept alive.

Topics: Pain, Children, Taken

Is it not high time for the people of this country to explicitly declare whether they will be free men or slaves. It is an important question which aught to be decided. It concerns more than anything in this life. The salvation of our souls is interested in this event. For wherever tyranny is established, immorality of every kind comes in like a torrent, it is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice.

Topics: Country, Ignorance, Men, Immorality, Free Man

Could I be assured that America would remain virtuous, I would venture to defy the utmost Efforts of Enemies to subjugate her.

Topics: America, Effort, Enemy

I would advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though it were revealed from Heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine men were to perish, and only one of a thousand to survive and retain his liberty. One such freeman must possess more virtue, and enjoy more happiness, than a thousand slaves.

Topics: Struggle, Men, Heaven

Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.

Topics: Long, Liberty, Extinction

The country shall be independent, and we will be satisfied with nothing short of it.

source: - Entry for March 9, 1774. "The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the United States of America". Book by William Gordon, Volume 1 p. 347, 1969.

Topics: Country, War, Independent

For no People will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can they easily be subdued, where Knowledge is diffusd and Virtue preservd . On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own Weight, without the Aid of foreign Invaders.

source: - "Warren-Adams Letters: Being Chiefly a Correspondence Among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren ... 1743-1814".

Topics: Patriotic, People, Ignorant, Invaders, American Liberty

The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.

source: - Debates of the Massachusetts Convention, 1788.

Topics: Gun, Strong Arms, People, Handguns, States Rights

A true patriot would keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not allow them to rest till the causes of their just complaints are removed.

Topics: Citizens, Attention, Causes

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

source: - The Advertiser, 1748.

Topics: Law, Government, People, Laws And Government, Moral Virtues

It bodes very ill for government when men are exalted to places of high trust through their own solicitations. He only fills a place with dignity who is invited to it by his fellow citizens from the experience they have had of his adequate abilities.

source: - Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1778-1802”

Topics: Men, Citizens, Adequate, Solicitation

It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.

source: - "Loyalty and Sedition". Essay published in The Advertiser, 1748.

Topics: Mean, Men, Law

Our union is now complete; our constitution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties.

source: - Speech about the Declaration of Independence, www.samuel-adams-heritage.com. August 01, 1776.

Topics: Liberty, Unions, Constitution

It requires time to bring honest Men to think & determine alike even in important Matters. Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

source: - Samuel Adams (1907). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1773-1777”

Topics: Men, Thinking, Feelings

Give credit to whom credit due.

Topics: Giving, Credit, Dues

Were the talents and virtues, which Heaven has bestowed on men, given merely to make then more obedient drudges, to be sacrificed to the follies and ambition of a few? Or, were not the noble gifts so equally dispensed with a divine purpose and law, that they should as nearly as possible be equally exerted, and the blessings of Providence be equally enjoyed by all?

source: - Speech in the State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com. August 01, 1776.

Topics: Ambition, Blessing, Equality, Divine Purpose

May every citizen ... have a proper sense of the Deity upon his mind and an impression of the declaration recorded in the Bible, 'Him that honoreth Me I will honor, but he that despiseth Me shall be lightly esteemed.'

source: - Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1778-1802”

Topics: Honor, Mind, Citizens

One battle would do more towards a Declaration of Independence than a long chain of conclusive arguments in a provincial convention or the Continental Congress.

Topics: Long, Independence, Battle, Continental

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

source: - Samuel Adams (1946). “Samuel Adams: selections from his writings”

Topics: Men, Rights, Self, Natural Rights

A nation of shopkeepers are very seldom so disinterested.

source: - 'Oration in Philadelphia' 1 August 1776 (the authenticity of this publication is doubtful).

Topics: Shopkeepers, Disinterested, Nations