Founding Fathers Quotes

“One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.”
― Ron Paul

“Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly “free” state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot.”
― Tiffany Madison

“How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Give me liberty or give me death."

[From a speech given at Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775 to the Virginia House of Burgesses; as first published in print in 1817 in William Wirt's Life and Character of Patrick Henry.]”
― Patrick Henry, Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death

“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 10: 1 May 1816 to 18 January 1817

“The answer to 1984 is 1776”
― Alex E. Jones

“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it."

[First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801]”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Inaugural Speeches and Messages of Thomas Jefferson, Esq.: Late President of the United States: Together with the Inaugural Speech of James Madison, Esq. ...

“For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as His own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness, and truth then formerly we have been acquainted with.”
― John Winthrop

“Principles of Liberty
1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.
2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally strong people is to elect virtuous leaders.
4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.
5. All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible.
6. All men are created equal.
7. The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things.
8. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
9. To protect man's rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law.
10. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.
11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical.
12. The United States of America shall be a republic.
13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers.
14. Life and Liberty are secure only so long as the Igor of property is secure.
15. The highest level of securitiy occurs when there is a free market economy and a minimum of government regulations.
16. The government should be separated into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.
17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power.
18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution.
19. Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to the government, all others being retained by the people.
20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.
21. Strong human government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.
22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.
23. A free society cannot survive a republic without a broad program of general education.
24. A free people will not survive unless they stay strong.
25. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."
26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity.
27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest.
28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.”
― Founding Fathers

“Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

“Yes here's to the founding fathers—slave-owners, British citizens who didn't want to pay taxes...”
― David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp

“But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

“The president’s title as proposed by the senate was the most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard of. It is a proof the more of the justice of the character given by Doctr. Franklin of my friend [John Adams]: ‘Always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes absolutely mad'.”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 15: March 1789 to November 1798

“The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Americans have long found it difficult to think about the nation's Founders with discernment. We eschew nuance and complexity for an all-or-nothing dogmatism that either venerates the Founders of views them with disdain. Let's strive to do better.”
― Robert Tracy McKenzie, We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy

“[Alexander Hamilton and John Adams] wanted to build democracy in America on the basis of rational debate, reason, and compromise. But they had no illusions about human nature: They knew that men could sometimes succumb to "passions," to use their old-fashioned word. They knew that any political system built on logic and rationality was always at risk from an outburst of the irrational.”
― Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

“Virtually all of the Founding Fathers of our nation, even those who rose to the heights of the presidency, those whom we cherish as our authentic heroes, were so enmeshed in the ethos of slavery and white supremacy that not one ever emerged with a clear, unambiguous stand on Negro rights. No human being is perfect. In our individual and collective lives every expression of greatness is followed, not by a period symbolizing completeness, but by a comma implying partialness. Following every affirmation of greatness is the conjunction “but.” Naaman “was a great man,” says the Old Testament, “but . . .”—that “but” reveals something tragic and disturbing—“but he was a leper.” George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Quincy Adams, John Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln were great men, but—that “but” underscores the fact that not one of these men had a strong, unequivocal belief in the equality of the black man.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

“Let us all, like our founding fathers, pledge our own lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor, to the cause of liberty and self-government. So that we may continue to have the freedom to follow our conscience, to build our lives, and to live in peace.”
― Kristi Noem, Not My First Rodeo: Lessons from the Heartland

“Virtue will slumber. The wicked will be continually watching. Consequently, you will be undone.”
― Patrick Henry

“the republican revolution was the greatest utopian movement in American history. The revolutionaries aimed at nothing less than a reconstruction of American society....They sought to reconstruct a society and governments based on virtue and distinterested public leadership and to set in motion a moral movement that would eventually be felt around the globe.”
― Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution

“There was then, an American tradition of morality and virtues. "As Americans," wrote former U.S. Congresswoman and Author Clare Luce Booth, "we can proudly say that the traditional moral values of our society have been a reflection, however imperfect, of this universal morality. All of our great men, all of our heroes, have been exemplars of some, if not all, of these virtues.”
― Dee R. Edgeworth, The High Ground: Why Civic Virtue Matters to America

“There was then, an American tradition of morality and virtues. As Americans, wrote former U.S. Congresswoman and Author Clare Luce Booth, we can proudly say that the traditional moral values of our society have been a reflection, however imperfect, of this universal morality. All of our great men, all of our heroes, have been exemplars of some, if not all, of these virtues.”
― Dee R. Edgeworth, The High Ground: Why Civic Virtue Matters to America

“So now we are ready to ask: In what direction can we say that Americans are going? Are we, as a people, going on the high road of universal morality or on the low road of universal immorality? The question is a crucial one for the future of our country. All history bears witness to the fact that there can be no public virtue without private morality. There can be no good government except in a good society. And there cannot be a good society unless the majority of the individuals in it are at least trying to be good people.”
― Clare Luce Booth, Is the New Morality Destroying America

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
― John Adams

“What we as a nation have lost waits to be reclaimed by people sufficiently humble to repent of their role in this loss, brave enough to cast aside everything that they cherish in the pursuit of this utterly vital reclamation, and stubborn enough to persist in the pursuit until the reclamation is wholly and entirely complete.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“A MORE INSIDIOUS RATIONALE underlies the Christian nationalist claim about the founders: the myth that only Christians are moral. The argument is that the United States was created by Christians for Christians because only they are moral, that Christianity is required for a moral society...
Religion gets its morality from us, not the other way around. Even today, many people mistakenly believe that morality cannot exist outside of religion.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“...these Enlightenment thinkers and the founders they influenced shared an important constant: they did not view religion as valuable because of its truth claims or as a sense of morality, but simply as a means of producing good behavior without a reasoned moral analysis.”
― Andrew L. Seidel, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

“The founders understood that human rights are more powerful, absolute, and universal than god-given rights.”
― Andrew L Seidel

“He [Adams] wakened for a brief moment, indicated that nothing more should be done to prolong the inevitable, then, with obvious effort, gave a final salute to his old friend with his last words: "Thomas Jefferson survives," or, by another account, "Thomas Jefferson still lives." Whatever the version, he was wrong for the moment but right for the ages.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

“The makers of our Constitution were not a congregation of religious enthusiasts. If they protected religion from the intrusive propensities of all government and its functionaries, it was not because they loved churches and doctrines. It was because they loved freedom, and hated tyranny, especially tyranny over the mind. They knew that religion cannot exist except in a mind. The First Amendment protects not churches, but individuals, minds. It affirms that the inner life of individuals is none of government’s damned business.”
― Richard Mitchell