Adam Ferguson Quotes
Liberty is a right which every individual must be ready to vindicate for himself, and which he who pretends to bestow as a favor, has by that very act in reality denied. Even political establishments, though they appear to be independent of the will and arbitration of men, cannot be relied on for the preservation of freedom; they may nourish, but should not supersede that firm and resolute spirit, with which the liberal mind is always prepared to resist indignities, and to refer its safety to itself.
American Founding Fathers were not the first to realize that freedom that depended on government was not very safe. It is highly likely that a number of them had read Ferguson. But they together with the public pressure for a Bill of Rights were the first to build a structure that would be based on the assumption that government alone could not be trusted as the guarantor and provider of freedom and rights.
Adam Ferguson, 1723-1816, (Ferguson of Rath), Scottish Historian & Philosopher, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 1767
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Adam Ferguson, FRSE (Scottish Gaelic: Adhamh MacFhearghais), also known as Ferguson of Raith, was a Scottish philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment.
