“Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom.”

Suspicion is a virtue as long as its object is the public good, and as long as it stays within proper bounds. Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.

Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings – give us that precious jewel and you may take everything else!

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defense?

I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.

The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun.

it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts.

Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty?

I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian Religion. If they had that and I had not given them one shilling they would have been rich; and if they had not that and I had given them all the world, they would be poor.

Fear is the passion of slaves.

Patrick Henry wanted the Constitution to have a Bill of Rights attached to it — a list of powers that the government could never use against the people of the United States.

I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil.

The eternal difference between right and wrong does not fluctuate, it is immutable.

A King, by disallowing Acts of this salutary nature, from being the father of his people, degenerated into a Tyrant and forfeits all rights to his subjects’ obedience.

I smell a rat.

I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Beside, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone.