“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
Who said that?
- Tom Paine
- Wendell Phillips
- Thomas Jefferson
- John Philpot Curran
- Abraham Lincoln
The correct answer is not C. – Thomas Jefferson. That’s what I thought, too, until one day last week. That quote is one of my favorites. I’ve used it repeatedly so many times to make the point that freedom is not free, that it requires constant watchfulness over the dark forces that would erode and destroy democratic freedoms.
Last week, I used that quote in conversation, and the person said, “Great line! Who said that?”
“Thomas Jefferson,” I told her. Then, scrounging in my memory bank, I added. “Wait now, I’m not really sure.” I began to think it might have been Tom Paine. Or Patrick Henry maybe? Ben Franklin?
When I researched online, I was surprised to find out it was not only not Thomas Jefferson who said it, it was not even any of the Founding Fathers. It certainly sounds like something one of them would say. I harbor the notion, nurtured in grade school, that the Founding Fathers walked around all day orating ringing phrases destined for marble, such as “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Back to the quiz: The correct answer, probably, is B – Wendell Phillips, although a case can be made for D – John Phillip Curran.
Curran was an Irish lawyer who, during a July 10, 1790 speech in Dublin, said, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” Curran’s words were published in many American newspapers.
On Jan. 28, 1852, an abolitionist, Wendell Phillips, gave a speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, during which he said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.”
In the same speech, Phillips went on to deliver words that have an eerie resonance for our times.
He said this: “The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by (uninterrupted) agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.”
In the course of my research, I quickly learned there are people who spend a great deal of time chasing down famous phrases, trying to determine precisely who said what first. These literary sleuths often discover many famous quotes have been attributed to the “wrong” people. The vast, wide-ranging historical resources now available via the Internet make such pinpoint sleuthing possible.
One of the sleuths is Anna Berkes, researcher at the Jefferson Library and an expert in tracking down quotes either spoken or written by Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Our third president, Jefferson lived from 1743 to 1826. He died at 83, remarkably on the Fourth of July and just a few hours before the death of his sometimes-friend, sometimes-foe John Adams, the second president of the United States.
Some of Jefferson’s memorable quotes are these:
“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or a newspaper without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.”
“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
“Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on (political) offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.”
Still more relevant than ever, the great Jefferson could have written such words just yesterday – or tomorrow.
Here’s my favorite Jefferson quote, the immortal second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, truly worthy of marble:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
