47 Quotes by James Otis

The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property, without his consent in person, or by representation.

What must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust!

Dew depends not on Parliament.

The people's safety is the law of God.

Taxation without representation is tyranny.

[The passage of the Sugar Act] set people a thinking, in six months, more than they had done in their whole lives before.

No parts of his Majesty's dominions can be taxed without their consent.

And I take this opportunity to declare, that ...I will to my dying day oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me...the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty, and the fundamental principles of the constitution, that ever was found in an English law-book.

Every British Subject born on the continent of America, or in any other of the British dominions, is by the law of God and nature, by the common law, and by act of parliament, (exclusive of all charters from the crown) entitled to all the natural, essential, inherent and inseparable rights of our fellow subjects in Great- Britain.