"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."
— James Madison

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
— James Madison

"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."
— James Madison

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
— James Madison

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
— James Madison (The Federalist Papers)

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both"
— James Madison

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither."
— John Stuart Mill

"A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury."
— John Stuart Mill

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
— John Stuart Mill

""Conservatives are not necessarily stupid,
but most stupid people are conservatives.""
— John Stuart Mill

"As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other. "
— John Stuart Mill

"The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
— John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)

"He who stands for nothing will fall for anything."
— Alexander Hamilton

"

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchment or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by moral power.
"
— Alexander Hamilton

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
— Benjamin Franklin

"Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal."
— Benjamin Franklin

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid"
— Benjamin Franklin

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common."
— John Locke

"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."
— John Locke

""Revolt is the right of the people" "
— John Locke

"No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."
— John Locke

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war,where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
— Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan)

"Life is solitary, poor, nsty brutish and short."
— Thomas Hobbes

"Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools. "
— Thomas Hobbes

"I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage"
— Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu

"I cannot live without books."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants."
— Thomas Jefferson

"We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate. "
— Thomas Jefferson

"Information is the currency of democracy."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Free men have arms; slaves do not."
— William Blackstone