How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance.

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

The people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, & they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree.

He [Weishaupt] says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.