“If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
– Samuel Adams, Speech, State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1 August 1776)

“A standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a Body distinct from the rest of the Citizens. They have their Arms always in their hands. Their Rules and their Discipline is severe. They soon become attached to their officers and disposed to yield implicit Obedience to their Commands. Such a Power should be watched with a jealous Eye.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren (1776)

“The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.”
– Samuel Adams, Essay, written under the pseudonym “Candidus,” in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771)

“All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“If Virtue & Knowledge are diffus’d among the People, they will never be enslav’d. This will be their great Security.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren (12 February 1779)

“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren, November 4, 1775

“How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!”
– Samuel Adams, , Letter to John Pitts (21 January 1776)

“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren (24 October 1780)

“Courage, then, my countrymen, our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”
– Samuel Adams, Speech, State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1 August 1776)

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Miss-attributed or Not Sourced:

“It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue”
– Samuel Adams (No Original Source)

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”
– Samuel Adams (No Original Source)