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Who really said it

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety

Verified — Pennsylvania Assembly, 11 November 1755 Benjamin Franklin 1706–1790 · printer, scientist & Founding Father
Verified Free to reuse

Genuine, and you can read the whole document. The sentence appears in the Pennsylvania Assembly’s Reply to the Governor of 11 November 1755, addressed to Royal Governor Robert Hunter Morris. The reply was drafted by an Assembly committee that included Franklin, and the Yale editors of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin note against this very sentence that it ‘is used here by bf for the first time.’ What it was about is the surprise: a fight over whether the Penn family’s estates could be taxed to pay for frontier defence the document ↗.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” —Benjamin Franklin, for the Pennsylvania Assembly, Reply to the Governor, 11 November 1755.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Document
Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor
Dated
11 November 1755, Philadelphia
Addressed to
Governor Robert Hunter Morris
Printed in
Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives, 1755–1756, pp. 19–21

In fine, we have the most sensible Concern for the poor distressed Inhabitants of the Frontiers. We have taken every Step in our Power, consistent with the just Rights of the Freemen of Pennsylvania, for their Relief, and we have Reason to believe, that in the Midst of their Distresses they themselves do not wish us to go farther. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. Pennsylvania Assembly, 11 November 1755

The sentence in its own paragraph. Read what comes immediately before it: the Assembly is saying that the frontier settlers themselves would not want the House to surrender the point. It is a legislature refusing to trade away its taxing power for a defence bill — not a citizen refusing a search.

Founders Online — the full Reply to the Governor, 11 Nov 1755

How we traced it

  • The full text is on Founders Online, from The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 6, pp. 238–243. Editorial note 9, attached to this exact sentence, reads: ‘This sentence, frequently quoted, is used here by bf for the first time’ read it in full ↗.
  • The paragraphs before it are all about money. Morris kept refusing the Assembly’s supply bills because they taxed the estates of the Penn family, the colony’s proprietors, who had appointed him. The Assembly had just voted £60,000 for the King’s use, funded by ‘a Tax on all Estates’ — the Penns’ included — and offered to let the Crown settle the exemption question. Morris said no.
  • So the ‘little temporary Safety’ on offer was a defence bill that let the proprietors off the tax roll, and the ‘essential Liberty’ was the legislature’s own power of the purse. Benjamin Wittes laid this out on NPR in 2015, and the primary document backs him up line by line NPR, 2 March 2015 ↗.
Public domain

The 1755 text is public domain worldwide — an official legislative document more than two and a half centuries old, printed in the Assembly’s Votes and Proceedings in 1756. Quote it freely. One caveat: the modern editorial notes and headnotes on Founders Online are copyright the American Philosophical Society and Yale University, so quote Franklin’s words, not the editors’. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

Real quote, borrowed meaning

Nobody needs to take this one away from Franklin — it is his, and the document is online. What goes wrong is the context, and it goes wrong in the same three ways every time.

A tax bill, not a search warrant context reversal

The dispute was whether the Penn family’s Pennsylvania estates could be taxed to fund frontier defence. The ‘essential Liberty’ is the Assembly’s power to tax; the ‘temporary Safety’ is a defence bill bought by exempting the proprietors. Franklin is defending a legislature’s authority, not limiting it the context ↗.

Franklin, via a committee small print

The reply is formally the Assembly’s, drafted by a committee Franklin sat on, and Founders Online lists the author as ‘Pennsylvania Assembly.’ Franklin is credited with the drafting, and Yale’s editors flag this sentence as his first use of it — so ‘Franklin wrote it’ is fair, as long as you know it was an official document.

Two versions in circulation drift

The 1755 original has capital L and S: ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’ The looser 1759 title-page version reads ‘They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ Modern paraphrases add ‘sacrifice,’ ‘freedom’ or ‘security,’ none of which he wrote.

Everyone, in every direction not a verdict

It gets deployed for and against surveillance, lockdowns, gun laws, airport screening and tax policy — often by people arguing opposite sides on the same day. Knowing the 1755 context does not settle any of those arguments. It just means the sentence is not the authority any of them think it is.

Genuinely Franklin, 11 November 1755 — written for the Pennsylvania Assembly in a fight over taxing the proprietors’ land, not about individual liberty versus state security the primary document ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

It is one of the great compressed sentences in English: a whole political philosophy in twenty words, with a moral sting at the end. That is exactly why it detaches so easily from 1755 and floats to wherever it is needed.

The irony is that the original argument was almost the mirror image of the modern one. Franklin was not warning that government would take too much power; he was insisting that an elected legislature keep its power to tax the rich and absent proprietors who were refusing to pay for the colony’s defence.

The 'essential Liberty' was a legislature's power to tax. It has been quoted ever since as if it meant privacy.

What the fight was actually about

Autumn 1755: after attacks in the Susquehanna Valley, Governor Morris demanded that the Assembly fund frontier defence.

The Assembly voted £60,000, to be raised by a tax on all estates in the province — including the Penn family’s.

The Penns had instructed their governor to reject any bill taxing their lands. Morris duly refused the bill.

The Assembly’s reply of 11 November offered to let the Crown decide the exemption, and refused to drop the tax to get a defence bill through. That refusal is what the sentence justifies.

Franklin reused a looser version in 1759, as the motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Freedom Power

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, 11 November 1755founders.archives.gov

The primary document, with the editors’ note that this is Franklin’s first use of the sentence.
Ben Franklin's Famous 'Liberty, Safety' Quote Lost Its Contextnpr.org

Benjamin Wittes on how a line about a colonial tax dispute became a slogan about surveillance.
Franklin, letter of 11 November 1755 — sourced entrywist.info

A sourced quotation dictionary carrying the same document, date and recipient.
Benjamin Franklin — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Notes the 1759 title-page variant and the earlier Poor Richard line it grew out of.

The true author

About Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

1706–1790 · printer, scientist & Founding Father

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was a printer, scientist, diplomat and Founding Father — and, in 1755, a working member of the Pennsylvania Assembly in the middle of a long constitutional brawl with the colony’s proprietors. That is the Franklin who wrote this sentence: not the sage on the hundred-dollar bill, but a legislator drafting a committee reply to a governor who kept vetoing his money bills. He liked the line enough to reuse it: a variant sits on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (1759), a book he published but did not write.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, 11 November 1755. Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives, 1755–1756 (Philadelphia, 1756), pp. 19–21; The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 6 (Yale, 1963), pp. 238–243.

MLA (9th ed.)

Pennsylvania Assembly. “Reply to the Governor.” 11 Nov. 1755. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 6, Yale UP, 1963, pp. 238–43.

APA (7th ed.)

Pennsylvania Assembly. (1755, November 11). Reply to the Governor. In L. W. Labaree (Ed.), The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Vol. 6, pp. 238–243).

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/those-who-would-give-up-essential-liberty-to-purchase

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