Arbitrary taxation is plunder authorized by law

I look upon North America as the only great nursery of freemen left on the face of the earth.

The idea of governing provinces and colonies by force is visionary and chimerical. The experiment has often been tried, and it has never succeeded. It ends infallibly in the ruin of one country or the other.

The true art of government consists in not governing too much.

The people are certainly the best judges whether they are well governed; and the Crown can have no rights inconsistent with the happiness of the people.

It has always been a most arduous task to govern distant provinces, with even a tolerable appearance of justice.

I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.