What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a... See more

Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned ; we have remonstrated ; we have sup¬ plicated ; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyranni¬ cal hands of the ministry... See more

I'm thinking of quotes like this line, which Thomas Jefferson originally penned to James Madison in 1787: "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." Or this, from another letter he wrote the same year: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time... See more