The love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism.

The forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book.

Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

Liberty once lost, is lost forever.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.

Power controlled or abridged is almost always the rival and enemy of that power by which it is controlled or abridged.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

Every command slaps liberty in the face.

The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.