“no people can be both ignorant and free.”

“Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

“A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.”

“The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.”

“That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”