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Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

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Equal rights for all special privileges for none.

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Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

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For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

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The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

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The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

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Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.

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If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

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Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

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A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

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I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of...more

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I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise ...more

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that ...more