“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”
Context: : These have often been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but also to Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, and many others; Lord Denning in The Road to Justice (1988) states that the phrase originated in a statement of Irish orator John Philpot Curran in 1790: "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."
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Leonard H. Courtney 9
British politician 1832–1918Related quotes
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — power is ever stealing from the many to the few….”
Wendell Phillips
(1811–1884) American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer
Speech in Boston, Massachusetts (28 January 1852), Speeches Before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1853), p. 13. The memorable and oft-quoted phrase, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," was not in quotation marks in the printed edition of this speech. The Home Book of Quotations, ed. Burton Stevenson, 9th ed., p. 1106 (1964), notes that "It has been said that Mr. Phillips was quoting Thomas Jefferson, but in a letter dated 14 April, 1879, Mr. Phillips wrote: '"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" has been attributed to Jefferson, but no one has yet found it in his works or elsewhere.' It has also been attributed to Patrick Henry."
1850s
Context: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
George Washington
(1732–1799) first President of the United States
Oliver Cromwell, letter to Walter Dundas, 12 September 1650; this is also a recent misattribution.
Misattributed
Richard Bertrand Spencer
(1978) American white supremacist
Spencer interview with Dinesh D'Souza for the documentary Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time?
“Democratic man, dreaming eternally of Utopias, is ever a prey to shibboleths.”
H.L. Mencken
(1880–1956) American journalist and writer
1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)
Herbert Hoover
(1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America
Page 4
The Challenge to Liberty (1934)
Jane Jacobs
(1916–2006) American–Canadian journalist, author on urbanism and activist (1916-2006)
Political questionnaire response (1952)
Context: I was taught that the American's right to be a free individual, not at the mercy of the state, was hard-won and that its price was eternal vigilance, that I too would have to be vigilant. I was made to feel that it would be a disgrace to me, as an individual, if I should not value or should give up rights that were dearly bought. I am grateful for that upbringing.
“Build your nest upon no tree here, for ye see that God hath sold the forest to death.”
Samuel Rutherford
(1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 206.
“Not result is the purpose of action, but God's eternal delight in becoming, seeing and doing.”
Sri Aurobindo
(1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma
Haile Selassie
(1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia
Address to the United Nations (1963)
Context: The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjugation of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.
But these, too, as were the phrases of the Covenant, are only words; their value depends wholly on our will to observe and honour them and give them content and meaning. The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act — and if necessary, to suffer and die — for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.
These lessons must be learned anew by each succeeding generation, and that generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience. This Organization and each of its members bear a crushing and awesome responsibility: to absorb the wisdom of history and to apply it to the problems of the present, in order that future generations may be born, and live, and die, in peace.