Quotes - Benjamin Franklin

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.       

"In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own... Who ever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." --Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin, before the Constitutional Convention, (June 2, 1787):
"... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ..."

'It would be a hard government that should tax its people one-tenth part of their income.