Liberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted.

Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice.

Who will wear a shoe that hurts him, because the shoe-maker tells him ’tis well made?

It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun.

God helps those who help themselves.

Tis hard to comprehend how one man can come to be master of many, equal to himself in right, unless it be by consent or by force.

Violence and fraud can create no right.

I will believe in the right of one man to govern a nation despotically when I find a man born unto the world with boots and spurs, and a nation with saddles on their backs.

[I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.

Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by them be dissolved, and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked, if men might not justly defend themselves against injustice by their own natural right, when the ways prescribed by publick authority cannot be taken.