- Paul Revere: [riding through a town at night] Turn out! Turn out your militia!
- Villager: [opens window] What's all the noise down there?
- Paul Revere: The Redcoats are coming!
- Paul Revere: There's a time for casting silver and a time for casting cannon. If that isn't in the Holy Writ, it should be.
- James Otis: [speaking at meeting] For we must fight this war, in meeting house and Congress and the halls of Parliament, as well as on the field! But what it's all about, you'll really never know. And yet it-it it's so much simpler than any of you think. We give all we have. We fight! We die, for a simple thing. Only that a man could stand.
- Samuel Adams: [speaking at the Old South church] This meeting can do nothing more to save the country!
- Gen. Gage: [to his officers] You see those campfires, gentlemen? Yesterday we ruled over Boston. Tonight we are beseiged in it. And still they come from every village and farm. Tonight 10,000. Tomorrow perhaps twice 10,000. We've experienced more than a defeat, more than a mere misfortune of war. We have been vanquished by an idea, a belief in human rights.
- Ship Captain: [During the Tea Party] Isn't it odd? These Indians seem to prefer principles to profits.
- Patriot Commander at Lexington: We'll stand by our orders, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.