American founding fathers Quote by Samuel Adams

[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.

— Samuel Adams

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

— Algernon Sidney

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

— Alexis de Tocqueville

absolute liberty ... tends to corrupt absolutely.

— Gertrude Himmelfarb

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

— Edmund Burke

A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.

— Thomas Jefferson

[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.

— Edward Gibbon

You can have no wise laws nor free enforcement of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people --…

— William Allen White

A people who chose security over liberty will receive neither nor deserve either.

— Benjamin Franklin

Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.

— John Major

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.

— Henry David Thoreau

A wise man neither suffers himself to be governed, nor attempts to govern others.

— Jean de la Bruyere