Eternal Vigilance

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; which condition if he break, servitude is at once
the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.

John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

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