1. Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

-William Pitt

2. Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

-Thomas Jefferson

3. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

-Thomas Jefferson

4. God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

-Daniel Webster

5. Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

-Thomas Jefferson

6. The power to tax is the power to destroy.

-John Marshall

7. To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.

-Thomas Jefferson

8. I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

-Thomas Jefferson

9. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

-Lord Acton

10. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

-Mao Zedong

11. The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.

-John Hay

12. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

-Edmund Burke

13. None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

-Goethe

14. When the government’s boot is on your throat, whether it is a left boot or a right boot is of no consequence.

-Gary Lloyd

15. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

-Barry Goldwater

16. If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

-Samuel Adams

17. The desire to rule is the mother of heresies.

-St. John Chrysostom

18. In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning and cruelty.

-Leo Tolstoy

19. A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

-Edward R. Murrow

20. Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at its worst, an intolerable one.

-Thomas Paine

21. Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.

-Charles Péguy

22. What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
-Adolf Hitler

23. Power concedes nothing without a demand.  It never did and it never will.  Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them, and these will continue till they have been resisted with either words or blows, or with both.  The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.
-Frederick Douglass

24. The majority never has right on its side. Never I say! That is one of the social lies that a free, thinking man is bound to rebel against. Who makes up the majority in any given country? Is it the wise men or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible overwhelming majority, all the wide world over.
-Henrik Ibsen

25. The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

-John Adams

26. Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances.
-R. W. Emerson

27. Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
-Woodrow Wilson

28. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
-John F. Kennedy

29. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.
-Patrick Henry

30. ... whenever the Legislators endeavour to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience ... [Power then] devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and, by the Establishment of a new Legislative (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own Safety and Security, which is the end for which they are in Society.
–John Locke

31. No slaves shall keep any arms whatever, nor pass, unless with written orders from his master or employer, or in his company, with arms from one place to another.
-A Bill Concerning Slaves [1785]

32. The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty.
-Adolf Hitler