Benjamin Franklin quote
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”
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https://www.hoover.org/research/what-benjamin-franklin-really-said
Benjamin Wittes,  Friday, July 15, 2011, 6:53 AM 
Here's an interesting historical fact I have dug up in some research for an essay I am writing about the relationship between liberty and security: That famous quote by Benjamin Franklin that “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” does not mean what it seems to say. Not at all.
I started looking into this quotation because I am writing a frontal attack on the idea that liberty and security exist in some kind of "balance" with one another--and the quotation is kind of iconic to the balance thesis. Indeed, Franklin's are perhaps the most famous words ever written about the relationship. A version of them is engraved on the Statue of Liberty. They are quoted endlessly by those who assert that these two values coexist with one another in a precarious, ever-shifting state of balance that security concerns threaten ever to upset. Every student of American history knows them. And every lover of liberty has heard them and known that they speak to that great truth about the constitution of civilized government--that we empower governments to protect us in a devil’s bargain from which we will lose in the long run. 
“Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a terrible master”
Very few people who quote these words, however, have any idea where they come from or what Franklin was really saying when he wrote them. That's not altogether surprising, since they are far more often quoted than explained, and the context in which they arose was a political battle of limited resonance to modern readers. Many of Franklin's biographers don't quote them at all, and no text I have found attempts seriously to explain them in context. The result is to get to the bottom of what they meant to Franklin, one has to dig into sources from the 1750s, with the secondary biographical literature giving only a framework guide to the dispute. I'm still nailing down the details, but I can say with certainty at this stage that Franklin was not saying anything like what we quote his words to suggest. 
The words appear originally in a 1755 letter that Franklin is presumed to have written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the colonial governor during the French and Indian War. The letter was a salvo in a power struggle between the governor and the Assembly over funding for security on the frontier, one in which the Assembly wished to tax the lands of the Penn family, which ruled Pennsylvania from afar, to raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the Assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him. So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security. 
What's more the “purchase [of] a little temporary safety” of which Franklin complains was not the ceding of power to a government Leviathan in exchange for some promise of protection from external threat; for in Franklin’s letter, the word “purchase” does not appear to have been a metaphor. The governor was accusing the Assembly of stalling on appropriating money for frontier defense by insisting on including the Penn lands in its taxes--and thus triggering his intervention. And the Penn family later offered cash to fund defense of the frontier--as long as the Assembly would acknowledge that it lacked the power to tax the family’s lands. Franklin was thus complaining of the choice facing the legislature between being able to make funds available for frontier defense and maintaining its right of self-governance--and he was criticizing the governor for suggesting it should be willing to give up the latter to ensure the former. 
In short, Franklin was not describing some tension between government power and individual liberty. He was describing, rather, effective self-government in the service of security as the very liberty it would be contemptible to trade. Notwithstanding the way the quotation has come down to us, Franklin saw the liberty and security interests of Pennsylvanians as aligned.
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https://quotesfromthepast.com/benjamin-franklin-on-sacrificing-freedom-for-security/
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” is a quote and motto attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
First Instance
The aphorism first appeared in The Pennsylvania Assembly’s reply to the governor, Robert Hunter Morris, after he had refused his assent to a bill passed by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on 8th November 1755. The Assembly’s reply was prepared by a committee, but this maxim was attributed to Benjamin Franklin.
Morris had requested that funds for the defence of the colony be raised to mount an offense against the Shawnee who had defected to the French and were attacking the Pennsylvanian frontier.
The Assembly’s bill had granted £60,000 for the King’s use to be “backed by a tax on all estates in the province”. The Quaker leaders of the assembly had further requested that efforts be made to satisfy the grievances of the Shawnee who had previously enjoyed harmonious relations with the colony.
Morris was incensed by attention to the grievances “of the Indians now engaged in laying waste the Country and butchering the Inhabitants”. He also rejected the Assembly’s effort to tax proprietorial lands – the Penn family being the proprietors.
What ensued was a clash between Morris and Franklin that ended in a protracted deadlock.
Second Instance
In 1759, Benjamin Franklin published An historical review of the constitution and government of Pennsylvania from its origin by Richard Jackson. Franklin claimed contributions of his own including the motto that appeared on the book’s jacket: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Third instance
Between the First Continental Congress (September 5 – October 26, 1774) and the Second Continental Congress (May 1775), Benjamin Franklin attended a conference intended to find a solution to tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies.
The conference floated the possibility of compensating the East India Company for the tea dumped into Boston Harbor on December 16, 1773 if Britain agreed to send a royal commissioner to America and repeal the Coercive Acts of 1774.
The Coercive Acts were enacted by the British Parliament in reponse to the “blatant destruction of British Property”. The acts closed the Port of Boston to commercial trade, established military rule in Massachusetts, granted immunity to British officials throughout the colonies and ordered colonists to quarter British troops as required.
The meeting came to nothing. But among his contributions, Franklin made the following comment:
“As to the other two Acts, Massachusetts must suffer all the Hazards and Mischiefs of War, rather than admit the Alteration of their Charters and Laws by Parliament. They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Benjamin Franklin: Mini-Bio
Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston on 17th January 1706, was a founding father of the United States of America and the most significant revolutionary figure not to serve as president. He co-signed ‘The Declaration of Independence’ and the U.S. Constitution.
Franklin, a gifted polymath, was an acclaimed writer, printer, postmaster, philosopher, politician, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and the first U.S. Ambassador to France.
He was known as ‘The First American’ for his advocacy for colonial unity which he advanced through his roles as a diplomat, author, and public spokesman.
As Ambassador to France, Franklin championed the development of Franco-American relations.
He was a slave owner who had a change of heart and became president of the Abolition Society in 1787. Franklin later petitioned Congress, unsuccessfully, to abolish slavery.
Franklin is also remembered as one of the greatest scientists of his day. He was a trailblazer in the field of physics and electricity, and he altered the pattern of Atlantic navigation through his research into the Gulf Stream. 
His inventions include the lightning rod, bifocal spectacles, and the Franklin Stove.
Franklin was cherished for his civic activism: He founded the University of Pennsylvania, the Union Fire Department, the Library Company of Philadelphia and served as the 6th President of Pennsylvania.
Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia on 17th April 1790.