Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty

 Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty is engraved on this statue (click on the image and it will enlarge)

The quote, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," is usually, but erroneously, attributed to Thomas Jefferson.  Researchers have attributed a longer version of the quote to John Philpot Curran (1750 – 1817):

"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." – Speech upon the Right of Election for Lord Mayor of Dublin, 1790, as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations, ed. Suzy Platt, provides a cross reference to the first known appearance of the quote in its shorter form, in a speech by abolitionist Wendell Phillips in 1852:  "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

There you have it:  the famous quote, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" is not originally from Thomas Jefferson, but from the abolitionist lawyer Wendell Phillips.  

See this article for all the details:  Eternal Vigilance by Anna Berkes (https://www.monticello.org/site/blog-and-community/posts/eternal-vigilance)