Heritage Quote

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

-- Thomas Jefferson

Heritage Quote

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."

-- Thomas Jefferson

Heritage Quote

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual - or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country."

-- Samuel Adams, 1781 - in the Boston Gazette

Heritage Quote

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

-- Thomas Jefferson (First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801)

Heritage Quote

"In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 52, 8 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Finally, there seem to be but three Ways for a Nation to acquire Wealth. The first is by War as the Romans did in plundering their conquered Neighbours. This is Robbery. The second by Commerce which is generally Cheating. The third by Agriculture the only honest Way; wherein Man receives a real Increase of the Seed thrown into the Ground, in a kind of continual Miracle wrought by the Hand of God in his favour, as a Reward for his innocent Life, and virtuous Industry."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Positions to be Examined, 4 April 1769)

Heritage Quote

"Now is the seedtime of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now, will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters."

-- Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"To prevent crimes, is the noblest end and aim of criminal jurisprudence. To punish them, is one of the means necessary for the accomplishment of this noble end and aim."

-- James Wilson (Of the Study of the Law in the United States, Circa 1790)

Heritage Quote

"There is little need of commentary upon this clause. No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. It is a suitable pledge of his fidelity and responsibility to his country; and creates upon his conscience a deep sense of duty, by an appeal, at once in the presence of God and man, to the most sacred and solemn sanctions, which can operate upon the human mind."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Heritage Quote

"It is very imprudent to deprive America of any of her privileges. If her commerce and friendship are of any importance to you, they are to be had on no other terms than leaving her in the full enjoyment of her rights."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Political Observations)

Heritage Quote

"Work as if you were to live 100 Years, Pray as if you were to die To-morrow."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757)

Heritage Quote

"I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 85, 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Among the features peculiar to the political system of the United States, is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to every religious sect. "

-- James Madison (letter to Jacob de la Motta, August 1820)

Heritage Quote

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Monsieur A. Coray, 31 October 1823)

Heritage Quote

"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781 - Notes on Virginia Query 19

Heritage Quote

"The consciousness of having discharged that duty which we owe to our country is superior to all other considerations."

-- George Washington, 1788 - letter to James Madison

Heritage Quote

"The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 45, 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787)

Heritage Quote

"One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one."

-- James Madison Federalist No. 48, 1 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"The hour is fast approaching, on which the Honor and Success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding Country depend. Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are Freemen, fighting for the blessings of Liberty - that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men."

-- George Washington (General Orders, 23 August 1776)

Heritage Quote

"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1735)

Heritage Quote

"This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that I would address to you something which might possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run; and I too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. Few words will be necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. Farewell."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1825 - letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith

Heritage Quote

"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1785 - letter to Peter Carr

Heritage Quote

"If a nation expects to be ignorant - and free - in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1816 - letter to Colonel Charles Yancey

Heritage Quote

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue."

-- John Witherspoon, 1776 - The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men

Heritage Quote

"I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that is not the guide in expounding it, there may be no security "

-- James Madison (letter to Henry Lee, 25 June 1824)

Heritage Quote

"Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Wayles Eppes, 24 June 1813)

Heritage Quote

"If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 57, 19 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ'd they are best contented. For on the Days they work'd they were good-natur'd and chearful; and with the consciousness of having done a good Days work they spent the Evenings jollily; but on the idle Days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their Pork, the Bread, and in continual ill-humour."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography, 1771)

Heritage Quote

"The consciousness of having discharged that duty which we owe to our country is superior to all other considerations."

-- George Washington, 1788 - letter to James Madison

Heritage Quote

"Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to James Monroe, 24 October 1823)

Heritage Quote

"[Y]our late purchase of an estate in the colony of Cayenne, with a view to emancipating the slaves on it, is a generous and noble proof of your humanity. Would to God a like spirit would diffuse itself generally into the minds of the people of this country; but I despair of seeing it."

-- George Washington (letter to Marquis de Lafayette, 10 May 1786)

Heritage Quote

"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."

-- George Washington (letter to Philip Schuyler, 7/15/1777)

Heritage Quote

"War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1797 - letter to Thomas Pickney

Heritage Quote

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Autobiography, 1821)

Heritage Quote

"Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings - give us that precious jewel, and you may take every things else! Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel."

-- Patrick Henry (Speech to the Virginia Convention, 5 June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity and interest. But even our Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course."

-- George Washington, 1796 - Farewell Address

Heritage Quote

"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1785 - letter to John Adams

Heritage Quote

"The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of its political cares."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 12

Heritage Quote

"No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous."

-- Benjamin Franklin and George Whaley, 1774 - Principles of Trade

Heritage Quote

"In the next place, the state governments are, by the very theory of the constitution, essential constituent parts of the general government. They can exist without the latter, but the latter cannot exist without them."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Heritage Quote

"[T]o exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities, so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices ourselves and too elevated not to look down upon them in others; to hold the union of the States on the basis of their peace and happiness; to support the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as in its authorities; to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people as equally incorporated with and essential to the success of the general... as far as sentiments and intentions such as these can aid the fulfillment of my duty, they will be a resource which can not fail me."

-- James Madison (Second Inaugural Address, March 1813)

Heritage Quote

"I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery."

-- Patrick Henry (letter to Robert Pleasants, 18 January 1773)

Heritage Quote

"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 22, 14 December 1787)

Heritage Quote

"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please...Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1791 - Opinion on National Bank

Heritage Quote

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 - letter to William Johnson

Heritage Quote

"The moral precepts delivered in the sacred oracles form a part of the law of nature, are of the same origin and of the same obligation, operating universally and perpetually."

-- James Wilson (Of the Law of Nature, 1804)

Heritage Quote

"Remember, that Time is Money."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748)

Heritage Quote

"It is not necessary to enumerate the many advantages, that arise from this custom of early marriages. They comprehend all the society can receive from this source; from the preservation, and increase of the human race. Every thing useful and beneficial to man, seems to be connected with obedience to the laws of his nature, the inclinations, the duties, and the happiness of individuals, resolve themselves into customs and habits, favourable, in the highest degree, to society. In no case is this more apparent, than in the customs of nations respecting marriage."

-- Samuel Williams (The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, 1794)

Heritage Quote

"Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors."

-- John Adams (letter to the young men of the Philadelphia, 7 May 1798)

Heritage Quote

"Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams, 21 December 1817)

Heritage Quote

"Harmony in the married state is the very first object to be aimed at."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Mary Jefferson Eppes, 7 January 1798)

Heritage Quote

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

-- James Madison (letter to W.T. Barry, 4 August 1822)

Biden on Obama

'Some day he will be ready, but he's not ready now.'

-- Joe Biden

Heritage Quote

"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech."

-- Benjamin Franklin (writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, 9 July 1722)

Heritage Quote

"[W]e are confirmed in the opinion, that the present age would be deficient in their duty to God, their posterity and themselves, if they do not establish an American republic. This is the only form of government we wish to see established; for we can never be willingly subject to any other King than He who, being possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and rectitude, is alone fit to possess unlimited power."

Instructions of Malden, Massachusetts for a Declaration of Independence, 27 May 1776

Heritage Quote

"Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 69, 14 March 1788)

Heritage Quote

"The Alien bill proposed in the Senate is a monster that must forever disgrace its parents."

-- James Madison (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 20 May 1798)

Heritage Quote

"Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speaking to his grieving wife, 7/12/1804)

Heritage Quote

"The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of its political cares."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 12

Heritage Quote

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

-- John Adams, 1770 - in Defense of the British Soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre

Heritage Quote

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1822 - letter to James Smith

Heritage Quote

"People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Joel Barlow, 10 December 1807)

Heritage Quote

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781 - Notes on Virginia, Query 19

Heritage Quote

"Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1753 - letter to Collinson

Heritage Quote

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1766 - On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor

Heritage Quote

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1824 - letter to William Ludlow

Heritage Quote

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1802 - letter to Thomas Cooper

Heritage Quote

"The pyramid of government-and a republican government may well receive that beautiful and solid form-should be raised to a dignified altitude: but its foundations must, of consequence, be broad, and strong, and deep. The authority, the interests, and the affections of the people at large are the only foundation, on which a superstructure proposed to be at once durable and magnificent, can be rationally erected."

-- James Wilson

Heritage Quote

"As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them."

-- Tench Coxe (An American Citizen, No.2, 28 September 1787)

Heritage Quote

"The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institution may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest purposes. Should, hereafter, those incited by the lust of power and prompted by the Supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity: it will only serve to shew, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting an[d] inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchm[en]t can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the [one] side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other."

-- George Washington (fragments of the Draft First Inaugural Address, April 1789)

Heritage Quote

"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof - Lev. XXV, v. X"

Inscription on the Liberty Bell, from Leviticus 25:10

Heritage Quote

"The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth."

-- Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!"

-- George Washington (letter to James Warren, 31 March 1779)

Heritage Quote

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood."

-- John Adams (A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765)

Heritage Quote

"But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 32, 3 January 1788)

Heritage Quote

"[H]owever weak our country may be, I hope we shall never sacrifice our liberties."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Report on a National Bank, 13 December 1790)

Heritage Quote

"A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 46, 29 January 1788)

Heritage Quote

"This gave me occasion to observe, that when Men are employ'd they are best contented. For on the Days they work'd they were good-natur'd and chearful; and with the consciousness of having done a good Days work they spent the Evenings jollily; but on the idle Days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their Pork, the Bread, and in continual ill-humour."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1771 - Autobiography

Heritage Quote

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1766 - On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor

Heritage Quote

"It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation.... Our interest will be to throw open the doors of commerce, and to knock off all its shackles, giving perfect freedom to all persons for the vent to whatever they may choose to bring into our ports, and asking the same in theirs."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787 - Notes on the State of Virginia

Heritage Quote

"On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 - letter to William Johnson

Heritage Quote

"[T]he first transactions of a nation, like those of an individual upon his first entrance into life make the deepest impression, and are to form the leading traits in its character."

-- George Washington (letter to John Armstrong, 25 April 1788)

Heritage Quote

"The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Heritage Quote

"[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."

-- James Madison (speech in the House of Representatives, 10 January 1794)

Heritage Quote

"One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one."

-- James Madison, 1788 - Federalist No. 48 (referring to Congress)

Heritage Quote

"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1785 - letter to John Adams

Heritage Quote

"I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good, become honorable by being necessary."

-- Nathan Hale, 1776 - remark to Captain William Hull, who had attempted to dissuade him from volunteering for a spy mission for General Washington

Heritage Quote

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Rights of British America, 1774)

Heritage Quote

"So that the executive and legislative branches of the national government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every where the state sovereignties are represented; and the national sovereignty, as such, has no representation."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Heritage Quote

"The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 1796)

Heritage Quote

"If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation."

-- Samuel Adams, 1780 - letter to Elbridge Gerry

Heritage Quote

"The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex."

-- James Madison, 1788 - Federalist No. 48

Heritage Quote

"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?"

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1782 - Notes on Virginia, Query 12

Reaganomics 101

"The system has never failed us once. But we have failed the system every time we lose faith in the magic of the market place."

-- Ronald Reagan

Heritage Quote

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to Benjamin Vaughn, 14 March 1783)

Heritage Quote

"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape - that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 45)

Fascism

"The result is that we're beginning to ignore the sacredness of the individual. If we keep going in that direction there can be one outcome: our surrender to a totally government planned and controlled society. And when it happens it will be called the "fulfillment of the liberal dream." But in fact it will be fascism, because that what fascism is: private ownership with total government control."

-- Ronald Reagan

Heritage Quote

"[H]onesty will be found on every experiment, to be the best and only true policy; let us then as a Nation be just."

-- George Washington (Circular letter to the States, 14 June 1783)

Still true today

“Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy ‘accommodation.’ And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy one, but a simple one—if you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right... [E]very lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face.”

— Ronald Reagan

[Via The Patriot Post.]

Heritage Quote

"My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Rutledge, 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts...in which all religions agree."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Westmoreland County Petition, 2 November 1785)

Heritage Quote

"It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn."

-- George Washington, 1789 - letter to the Legislature of Pennsylvania

Still true today

"Our problem isn't a shortage of fuel, it's a surplus of government."

-- Ronald Reagan

Flyover country

"I'm sure everyone feels sorry for the individual who has fallen by the wayside or who can't keep up in our competitive society, but my own compassion goes beyond that to those millions of unsung men and women who get up every morning, send the kids to school, go to work, try to keep up the payments on their house, pay exorbitant taxes to make possible compassion for the less fortunate, and as a result have to sacrifice many of their own desires and dreams and hopes. Government owes them something better than always finding a new way to make them share the fruit of their toils with others."

-- Ronald Reagan

Heritage Quote

"Our own Country's Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions - The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny mediated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth."

-- George Washington, 1776 - General Orders

Heritage Quote

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting; correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private charter gave effulgence to his public virtues;. Such was the man for whom our nation morns"

-- John Marshall (official eulogy of George Washington, delivered by Richard Henry Lee, 26 December 1799)

Heritage Quote

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."

-- George Washington, 1796 - Farewell Address

Heritage Quote

"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families."

-- Benjamin Rush, 1773 - letter to His Fellow Contrymen: On Patriotism

Heritage Quote

"No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in its effect towards supporting free and good government."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Trustees for the Lottery of East Tennessee College, 6 May 1810)

Heritage Quote

"The best service that can be rendered to a Country, next to that of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement equally essential to the preservation, and the enjoyment of the blessing."

-- James Madison (letter to Littleton Dennis Teackle, 29 March 1826)

Heritage Quote

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787 - letter to William Stephens Smith

Heritage Quote

"The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 10, 23 November 1787)

Heritage Quote

"The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 9, 1787)

Heritage Quote

"Wherever indeed a right of property is infringed for the general good, if the nature of the case admits of compensation, it ought to be made; but if compensation be impracticable, that impracticability ought to be an obstacle to a clearly essential reform."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Vindication of the Funding System, 1792)

Heritage Quote

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)

Heritage Quote

"The necessity of procuring good Intelligence is apparent & need not be further urged--All that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible, For upon Secrecy, Success depends in Most Enterprizes of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned & promising a favorable issue.'

-- George Washington, commander-In-Chief of the Continental Army, Summer 1777

Heritage Quote

"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 46, 1 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued into anarchy, and I am much mistaken if experience has not wrought a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind that greater energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the community."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 26)

Heritage Quote

"Don't fire unless fired upon. But if they want a war let it begin here."

-- Captain John Parker (commander of the militiamen at Lexington, Massachusetts, on siting British Troops (attributed), 19 April 1775)

Heritage Quote

"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to George Washington, 19 June 1796)

Heritage Quote

"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families."

-- Benjamin Rush, 1773 - letter to His Fellow Contrymen: On Patriotism

Heritage Quote

"And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World; and if from that Particular alone, he does not find the Bliss of a double State much greater, instead of being less than he expected."

-- Benjamin Franklin, Reply to a Piece of Advice

Heritage Quote

"Our flag is our national ensign, pure and simple, behold it! Listen to it! Every star has a tongue, every stripe is articulate. "

-- Robert Winthrop (1809-1894), Senator from Massachusetts

Heritage Quote

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue."

-- John Witherspoon, 1776 - The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men

Heritage Quote

"[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous."

-- George Washington, 1790 - letter to Steptoe Washington

Heritage Quote

"No compact among men...can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other."

-- George Washington, 1789 - draft of first Inaugural Address

Heritage Quote

"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781 - Notes on Virginia Query 19

Heritage Quote

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters."

-- Samuel Adams, 1775 - letter to James Warren

Heritage Quote

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."

-- James Madison, 1792 - letter to Edmund Pendleton

Heritage Quote

"The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex."

-- James Madison, 1788 - Federalist No. 48

Heritage Quote

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1791 - Opinion on a National Bank

Heritage Quote

"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?"

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1782 - Notes on Virginia, Query 12

Heritage Quote

"The powers of congress must be defined, but their means must be adequate to the purposes of their constitution. It is possible there may be abuses and misapplications; still, it is better to hazard something than to hazard at all."

-- Oliver Ellsworth, 1783 - letter to Governor Trumbull

Heritage Quote

"We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge."

-- Fisher Ames, 1789 - speech in the United States House of Representatives

Heritage Quote

"The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of liberty but not the principle, for at the time they were determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to enslave the rest of mankind."

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 5, 21 March 1778)

Heritage Quote

"If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security. If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia in the same body ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions. If the federal government can command the aid of the militia in those emergencies which call for the military arm in support of the civil magistrate, it can the better dispense with the employment of a different kind of force. If it cannot avail itself of the former, it will be obliged to recur to the latter. To render an army unnecessary will be a more certain method of preventing its existence than a thousand prohibitions upon paper."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 29, 10 January 1788)

Heritage Quote

"The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Report on Manufactures, 1790)

Heritage Quote

"The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are, first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers. ... The ingredients which constitute safety in the republican sense are, first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 70, 14 March 1788)

Heritage Quote

"If, for instance, the president is required to do any act, he is not only authorized, but required, to decide for himself, whether, consistently with his constitutional duties, he can do the act."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Heritage Quote

"Statesmen my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand....The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty."

-- John Adams (letter to Zabdiel Adams, 21 June 1776)

Heritage Quote

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. . . . How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?"

-- John Adams (Diary, 2 June 1778)

In harm's way

Some quotes from men who were willing to die in defense of our liberty.

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 1

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves."

-- John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, 1775 - Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

-- Patrick Henry, 1775 - Speech to the Virginia Convention

"An honorable Peace is and always was my first wish! I can take no delight in the effusion of human Blood; but, if this War should continue, I wish to have the most active part in it."

-- John Paul Jones, 1782 - letter to Gouverneur Morris

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."

-- Thomas Paine, 1776 - The American Crisis, No. 1

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won Country's Honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions."

-- George Washington, 1776 - General Orders

Over a million men and women have died, through the years, in defense of our liberty here in the United States of America.

Our obligation to those who have died, and to the men and women in uniform who are in harm's way defending us today, is to respect and honor their sacrifice.

Think on the other countries in this world. How many of them are guaranteed the rights that we Americans have?

None. Not one. Zip. Zero. Nil. Nada.

Freedoms we are guaranteed: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, equality, to bear arms, to vote, speech, assembly, due process.

Guarantors of our freedoms: United States Marine Corps, United States Army, United States Navy, United States Air Force, United States Coast Guard.

Today we honor those who have died in order that we might live in liberty. Let's go out their and show them the honor, respect, and gratitude that they deserve by stepping forward and preserving those rights that so many have died to protect. Remember that most great nations in history were not conquered . . . they died from within. If we allow America to continue to rot from within, we dishonor those who laid down their lives for this great nation.

And that would indeed be an American tragedy.

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood."

-- John Adams, 1765 - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law

Thanks to the ultimate sacrifice by over a million American heros, we are free.

And I am deeply grateful. Thank you.

Heritage Quote

"Without liberty, law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without law, liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness."

-- James Wilson (Of the Study of the Law in the United States, Circa 1790)

Heritage Quote

"We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1805 - Second Inaugural Address

Heritage Quote

"In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail-maker."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Jean Nicolas Dimeunier, 29 April 1795)

Heritage Quote

"It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religion profession of sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship...."

Massachusetts Bill of Rights, Part the First, 1780

Heritage Quote

"A fine genius in his own country is like gold in the mine."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733)

Heritage Quote

"In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail-maker."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Jean Nicolas Dimeunier, 29 April 1795)

Heritage Quote

"[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous."

-- George Washington, 1790 - letter to Steptoe Washington

Heritage Quote

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue."

-- John Witherspoon, 1776 - The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men

Heritage Quote

"The citizens of the United States of America have the right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were by the indulgence of one class of citizens that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

-- George Washington (letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, 9 September 1790)

Heritage Quote

"Illustrious examples are displayed to our view, that we may imitate as well as admire. Before we can be distinguished by the same honors, we must be distinguished by the same virtues. What are those virtues? They are chiefly the same virtues, which we have already seen to be descriptive of the American character -- the love of liberty, and the love of law."

-- James Wilson (Of the Study of the Law in the United States, Circa 1790)

Heritage Quote

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass."

-- George Washington (letter to Benjamin Lincoln, 29 June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 1, 27 October 1787)

Heritage Quote

"He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing."

-- Benjamin Franklin (from his writings, 1758)

Heritage Quote

"My construction of the constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Samuel Adams Wells, 12 May 1819)

Heritage Quote

"What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind."

-- Abigail Adams, 1783 - letter to John Quincy Adams

"I hope some future day will bring me the happiness of seeing my family again collected under our own roof, happy in ourselves and blessed in each other."

-- Abigail Adams, 1784 - letter to John Adams

Heritage Quote

"The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity."

-- George Washington (letter to the people of South Carolina, Circa 1790)

Heritage Quote

"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please...Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1791 - Opinion on National Bank

Heritage Quote

"If duties are too high, they lessen the consumption; the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens by taxes of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 21, 1787)

Heritage Quote

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Judge William Johnson, 12 June 1823)

Heritage Quote

"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 15)

Heritage Quote

"That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangements of the powers of society, or, in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the laws, is the best of republics."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"The Declaration of Independence...[is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Samuel Adams Wells, 12 May 1821)

Heritage Quote

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Autobiography, 1821)

Heritage Quote

"[T]he President, who errs as other men do, but errs with integrity."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1795 - on George Washington in a letter to William Branch Giles

Heritage Quote

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 - letter to Judge William Johnson

Heritage Quote

"[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 - letter to Charles Hammond

Heritage Quote

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 - Autobiography

Heritage Quote

"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom."

-- John Adams (Defense of the Constitutions, 1787)

Heritage Quote

"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Heritage Quote

"The convention have done well, therefore, in so disposing of the power of making treaties, that although the President must, in forming them, act by the advice and consent of the Senate, yet he will be able to manage the business of intelligence in such a manner as prudence may suggest."

-- John Jay (Federalist No. 64, 7 March 1788)

Heritage Quote

"The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election... They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican govenrment may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 9, 1787)

Heritage Quote

"Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms an essential part of both."

-- James Wilson

Heritage Quote

"For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams, 28 October 1813)

Heritage Quote

"It is an unquestionable truth, that the body of the people in every country desire sincerely its prosperity. But it is equally unquestionable that they do not possess the discernment and stability necessary for systematic government. To deny that they are frequently led into the grossest of errors, by misinformation and passion, would be a flattery which their own good sense must despise."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the Ratifying Convention of New York, June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Law of Nature and Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776

Heritage Quote

"[T]here is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of [slavery]."

-- George Washington (letter to Robert Morris, 12 April 1786)

Heritage Quote

"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?"

-- Benjamin Franklin (to Thomas Paine, Date Unknown)

Heritage Quote

"May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy. "

-- George Washington (letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, August 1790)

Heritage Quote

"If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Duane, 1811)

Heritage Quote

"Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to John Trumbull, 16 October 1778)

Heritage Quote

"Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed: he may well win the race that runs by himself."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1747)

Heritage Quote

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

-- Benjamin Franklin (at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776)

Heritage Quote

"To restore... harmony,... to render us again one people acting as one nation should be the object of every man really a patriot."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Thomas McKean, 1801)

Heritage Quote

"If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 33, 3 January 1788)

Heritage Quote

"In the supposed state of nature, all men are equally bound by the laws of nature, or to speak more properly, the laws of the Creator."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to the Legislature of Massachusetts, 17 January 1794)

Heritage Quote

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves."

-- John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, 1775 - Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms

Quotables

“I say that the Second Amendment is, in order of importance, the first amendment. It is America’s First Freedom, the one right that protects all the others.” —Charlton Heston

“If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don’t celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.” —Charlton Heston

“As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I’ve realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it’s much, much bigger than that. I’ve come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.” —Charlton Heston

“I’d rather play a senator than be one.” —Charlton Heston

Heritage Quote

"Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 39, 1788)

Heritage Quote

"The great desiderata are a free representation and mutual checks. When these are obtained, all our apprehensions of the extent of powers are unjust and imaginary."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

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"I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic - it is also a truth, that if industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out."

-- James Madison (speech to the Congress, 9 April 1789)

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"It is very imprudent to deprive America of any of her privileges. If her commerce and friendship are of any importance to you, they are to be had on no other terms than leaving her in the full enjoyment of her rights."

-- Benjamin Franklin, Political Observations

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"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country."

-- Noah Webster, 1790 - On Education of Youth in America

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"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country."

-- Noah Webster, 1788 - On the Education of Youth in America

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"In the formation of our constitution the wisdom of all ages is collected--the legislators [of] antiquity are consulted, as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. It short, it is an empire of reason."

-- Noah Webster, 1787 - An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution

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"In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character...."

-- Noah Webster, 1789 - Letters to a Young Gentleman Commencing His Education

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"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."

-- Noah Webster, 1787 - An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution

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"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to James Warren, 12 February 1779)

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"What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Stephens Smith, 1787)

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"[E]very Man who comes among us, and takes up a piece of Land, becomes a Citizen, and by our Constitution has a Voice in Elections, and a share in the Government of the Country."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to William Straham, 19 August 1784)

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"Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity and interest. But even our Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)

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"In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons."

-- Benjamin Rush, 1811 - letter to John Adams

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"Whilst the last members were signing it Doctr. Franklin looking towards the Presidents chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. "

-- James Madison (Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 17 September 1787)

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"Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind."

-- Benjamin Rush, 1783 - letter to John Armstrong

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"Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

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"The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations."

-- George Washington, 1778 - letter to Thomas Nelson

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"The true test is, whether the object be of a local character, and local use; or, whether it be of general benefit to the states. If it be purely local, congress cannot constitutionally appropriate money for the object. But, if the benefit be general, it matters not, whether in point of locality it be in one state, or several; whether it be of large, or of small extent."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Earmarks, anyone?

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"In a general sense, all contributions imposed by the government upon individuals for the service of the state, are called taxes, by whatever name they may be known, whether by the name of tribute, tythe, tallage, impost, duty, gabel, custom, subsidy, aid, supply, excise, or other name."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

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"His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble."

-- Thomas Jefferson (on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 2 January 1814)

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"Statesmen by dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand....The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty."

-- John Adams, 1776 - letter to Zabdiel Adams

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"I am not a Virginian, but an American."

-- Patrick Henry (speech in the First Continental Congress, 6 September 1774)

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"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."

-- Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

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"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country."

-- Noah Webster (On Education of Youth in America, 1790)

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"His Example is now complete, and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magistrates, citizens, and men, not only in the present age, but in future generations, as long as our history shall be read."

-- John Adams (message to the U.S. Senate, 19 December 1799)

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"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please...Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1791 - Opinion on National Bank

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"His Example is now complete, and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magistrates, citizens, and men, not only in the present age, but in future generations, as long as our history shall be read."

-- John Adams (message to the U.S. Senate, 19 December 1799)

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"Here sir, the people govern."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech in the New York ratifying convention, 17 June 1788)

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"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."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1782)

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"Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1801 - letter to Hugh White

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"[A] wise and frugal government...shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1801 - First Inaugural Address

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"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1788 - letter to E. Carrington

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"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787 - letter to Abigail Adams

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"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781 - Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18

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"[T]he President, who errs as other men do, but errs with integrity."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1795 - on George Washington in a letter to William Branch Giles

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"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 - letter to Judge William Johnson

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"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1791 - Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank

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"[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 - letter to Charles Hammond

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"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 - Autobiography

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"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government."

-- Mercy Warren, 1805 - History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution

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"It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith.""

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Wayles Eppes, 24 June 1813)

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"Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Randolph, 1 December 1803)

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"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Carrington, 16 January 1787)

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"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

-- Thomas Paine (American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)

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"His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man."

-- Thomas Jefferson (on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 2 January 1814)

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"All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity.

And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men.

And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?""

-- Benjamin Franklin (To Colleagues at the Constitutional Convention)

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"As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 55, 15 February 1788)

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"There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue. It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 35, 1788)

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"I pronounce it as certain that there was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous."

-- Benjamin Franklin (The Busy-body, No. 3, 18 February 1728)

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"It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Hugh P. Taylor, 4 October 1823)

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"It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf."

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)

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"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency."

-- George Washington (First Inaugural Address, 30 April 1789)

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"There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come."

-- Peter Muhlenberg, 1776 - from a Lutheran sermon read at Woodstock, Virginia

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"It is not necessary to enumerate the many advantages, that arise from this custom of early marriages. They comprehend all the society can receive from this source; from the preservation, and increase of the human race. Every thing useful and beneficial to man, seems to be connected with obedience to the laws of his nature, the inclinations, the duties, and the happiness of individuals, resolve themselves into customs and habits, favourable, in the highest degree, to society. In no case is this more apparent, than in the customs of nations respecting marriage."

-- Samuel Williams, 1794 - The Natural and Civil History of Vermont

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"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Summary View of the Rights of British America, August 1774)

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"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position."

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)

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"One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle."

-- James Otis, 1761 - On the Writs of Assistance

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"Besides, to lay and collect internal taxes in this extensive country must require a great number of congressional ordinances, immediately operation upon the body of the people; these must continually interfere with the state laws and thereby produce disorder and general dissatisfaction till the one system of laws or the other, operating upon the same subjects, shall be abolished."

-- Federal Farmer, 1787 - Antifederalist Letter

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"[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it."

-- Federal Farmer, 1787 - Antifederalist Letter, No.18

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"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters."

-- Samuel Adams, 1775 - letter to James Warren

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"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt."

-- Samuel Adams, 1749 - essay in The Public Advertiser

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"The prosperity of commerce is now perceived and acknowledged by all enlightened statesmen to be the most useful as well as the most productive source of national wealth, and has accordingly become a primary object of its political cares."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 12, 27 November 1787)

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"And as to the Cares, they are chiefly what attend the bringing up of Children; and I would ask any Man who has experienced it, if they are not the most delightful Cares in the World; and if from that Particular alone, he does not find the Bliss of a double State much greater, instead of being less than he expected."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Reply to a Piece of Advice)

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"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty."

-- Fisher Ames (speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 15 January 1788)

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"The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most - for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?"

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Adams, 28 October 1813)

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"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."

-- George Washington, 1748 - The Rules of Civility

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"The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."

-- George Washington, 1796 - letter to Alexander Hamilton

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"My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom."

-- George Washington, 1796 - letter to Pierre Auguste Adet

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"I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but...I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it."

-- Fisher Ames (letter to George Richard Minot, 23 June 1789)

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"Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 34

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"Measures which serve to abridge the free competition of foreign Articles, have a tendency to occasion an enhancement of prices."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1791 - Report on Manufactures

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"Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1790 - Report on a National Bank

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"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals...[I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."

-- Albert Gallatin, 1789 - letter to Alexander Addison

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"As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them."

-- Tench Coxe, 1787 - An American Citizen, No.2

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"Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be... Our American Chivalry is the worst in the world. It has no Laws, no bounds, no definitions; it seems to be all a Caprice."

-- John Adams (letter to Thomas Jefferson, 17 April 1826)

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"The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant with the apparent objects and intent of the Constitution."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

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"War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Thomas Pickney, 29 May 1797)

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"I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

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"To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind."

-- Alexander Hamilton (The Farmer Refuted, 1775)

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"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates... to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

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"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."

-- John Adams (Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756)

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A lady asked Dr. Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got - a republic or a monarchy?" "A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it."

-- Benjamin Franklin, Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention of 1787

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"We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the state of Virginia, 1782)

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"He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age. It may be said of him as has been said of others that he was a "walking Library," and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that the Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him."

-- James Madison (on Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Harrison Smith, 4 November 1826)

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"[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community."

-- Benjamin Rush (letter to David Ramsay, Circa April 1788)

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"If we resort for a criterion to the different principles on which different forms of government are established, we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure for a limited period, or during good behavior."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 39)

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"The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations."

-- George Washington, 1796 - Farewell Address

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It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn.

-- George Washington, 1789 - letter to the Legislature of Pennsylvania

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Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families.

-- Benjamin Rush, 1773 - letter to His Fellow Contrymen: On Patriotism

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"Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

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"More permanent and genuine happiness is to be found in the sequestered walks of connubial life than in the giddy rounds of promiscuous pleasure."

-- George Washington (letter to the Marquis de la Rourie, 10 August 1786)

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"The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen."

-- John Adams (quoted in a letter from Rufus King to Theophilus Parsons, 20 February 1788)

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"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Richard Rush, 20 October 1820)

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"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own."

-- James Madison (Essay on Property, 29 March 1792)

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"Strangers are welcome because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old Inhabitants are not jealous of them; the Laws protect them sufficiently so that they have no need of the Patronage of great Men; and every one will enjoy securely the Profits of his Industry. But if he does not bring a Fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Those Who Would Remove to America, February 1784)

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"As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

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"No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one ever will."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to George Washington, 9 September 1792)

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"Tis well."

-- George Washington (Last Words, 14 December 1799)

Heritage Quote

"There exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity; since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."

-- George Washington (First Inaugural Address, 1789)

Heritage Quote

"In observations on this subject, we hear the legislature mentioned as the people's representatives. The distinction, intimated by concealed implication, through probably, not avowed upon reflection, is, that the executive and judicial powers are not connected with the people by a relation so strong or near or dear. But is high time that we should chastise our prejudices; and that we should look upon the different parts of government with a just and impartial eye."

-- James Wilson (Lectures on Law, 1791)

Heritage Quote

"This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest of ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."

-- John Jay (Federalist No. 2)

Heritage Quote

"I give my signature to many Bills with which my Judgment is at variance.... From the Nature of the Constitution, I must approve all parts of a Bill, or reject it in total. To do the latter can only be Justified upon the clear and obvious grounds of propriety; and I never had such confidence in my own faculty of judging as to be over tenacious of the opinions I may have imbibed in doubtful cases."

-- George Washington (letter to Edmund Pendleton, 23 September

Heritage Quote

"The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention, to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, 1749)

Heritage Quote

"The history of ancient and modern republics had taught them that many of the evils which those republics suffered arose from the want of a certain balance, and that mutual control indispensable to a wise administration. They were convinced that popular assemblies are frequently misguided by ignorance, by sudden impulses, and the intrigues of ambitious men; and that some firm barrier against these operations was necessary. They, therefore, instituted your Senate."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 58, 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Johnson, 1823)

Heritage Quote

"Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."

-- James Madison (speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 20 June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"I hope some future day will bring me the happiness of seeing my family again collected under our own roof, happy in ourselves and blessed in each other."

-- Abigail Adams, 1784 - letter to John Adams

Heritage Quote

"What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind."

-- Abigail Adams, 1783 - letter to John Quincy Adams

Heritage Quote

"As on the one hand, the necessity for borrowing in particular emergencies cannot be doubted, so on the other, it is equally evident that to be able to borrow upon good terms, it is essential that the credit of a nation should be well established."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Report on Public Credit, 9 January 1790)

Heritage Quote

"[T]he importance of piety and religion; of industry and frugality; of prudence, economy, regularity and an even government; all ... are essential to the well-being of a family."

-- Samuel Adams, 1780 - letter to Thomas Wells

Heritage Quote

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. . . . How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?"

-- John Adams, 1778 - Diary

Heritage Quote

"My ardent desire is, and my aim has been...to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the U States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home."

-- George Washington (letter to Partick Henry, 9 October 1775)

Heritage Quote

"I am persuaded that a firm union is as necessary to perpetuate our liberties as it is to make us respectable; and experience will probably prove that the National Government will be as natural a guardian of our freedom as the State Legislatures."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you... From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Peter Carr, 19 August 1785)

Heritage Quote

"[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 10, 23 November 1787)

Heritage Quote

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors."

-- George Washington (Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789)

Heritage Quote

"To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind."

-- Alexander Hamilton

Heritage Quote

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If `Thou shalt not covet' and `Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."

-- John Adams, 1787 - A Defense of the American Constitutions

Heritage Quote

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."

-- John Adams, 1780 - letter to Abigail Adams

Heritage Quote

"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."

-- John Adams, 1808 - letter to Benjamin Rush

Heritage Quote

"National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman."

-- John Adams, 1815 - letter to James Lloyd

Heritage Quote

"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."

-- John Adams, 1775 - letter to Abigail Adams

Heritage Quote

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood."

-- John Adams, 1765 - A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law

Heritage Quote

"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws."

-- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of the United States

Heritage Quote

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

-- Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book

Heritage Quote

"It is the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping GOD in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Spencer Roane, 9 March 1821)

Heritage Quote

"Excessive taxation...will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Taylor, 1798)

Heritage Quote

"Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to John Alleyne, 9 August 1768)

Heritage Quote

"Nothing...is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Cartwright, 1824)

Heritage Quote

"Human Felicity is produced not so much by great Pieces of good Fortune that seldom happen, as by little Advantages that occur every Day."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography, 1771)

Heritage Quote

"Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country."

-- George Washington (upon fumbling for his glasses before delivering the Newburgh Address, 15 March 1783)

Heritage Quote

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Stephens Smith, 13 November 1787)

Heritage Quote

"He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred right of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither."

-- Thomas Jefferson (deleted portion of a draft of the Declaration of Independence, June 1776)

Heritage Quote

"Laws for the liberal education of the youth, especially of the lower class of the people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"If we desire to insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War."

-- George Washington (fifth annual address to Congress, 13 December 1793)

Heritage Quote

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?"

-- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1781)

Heritage Quote

"On the other hand, the duty imposed upon him to take care, that the laws be faithfully executed, follows out the strong injunctions of his oath of office, that he will "preserve, protect, and defend the constitution." The great object of the executive department is to accomplish this purpose; and without it, be the form of government whatever it may, it will be utterly worthless for offence, or defence; for the redress of grievances, or the protection of rights; for the happiness, or good order, or safety of the people."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Heritage Quote

"History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781)

Quote-ables

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul."

– George Bernard Shaw

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

– Benjamin Franklin

"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation."

– Thomas B. Reed (1886)

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."

– P.J. O'Rourke

Heritage Quote

"It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we can. A better system of education for the common people might preserve them long from such artificial inequalities as are prejudicial to society, by confounding the natural distinctions of right and wrong, virtue and vice."

-- John Adams (letter to Count Sarsfield, 3 February 1786)

Heritage Quote

"Under all those disadvantages no men ever show more spirit or prudence than ours. In my opinion nothing but virtue has kept our army together through this campaign."

-- Colonel John Brooks (letter to a friend, 5 January 1778)

Heritage Quote

"The right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon . . . has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right."

-- James Madison (Virginia Resolutions, 24 December 1798)

Heritage Quote

"[I]f you speak of solid information and sound judgement, Colonel Washington is, unquestionably the greatest man on that floor."

-- Patrick Henry (on George Washington, October 1775)

Heritage Quote

"The members of the legislative department...are numerous. They are distributed and dwell among the people at large. Their connections of blood, of friendship, and of acquaintance embrace a great proportion of the most influential part of the society...they are more immediately the confidential guardians of their rights and liberties."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 50, 5 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men."

-- John Adams (Novanglus No. 7, 6 March 1775)

Heritage Quote

"And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we imagine we no longer need its assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?"

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1787 - Motion for Prayers in the Constitutional Convention

Heritage Quote

"Your love of liberty - your respect for the laws - your habits of industry - and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness."

-- George Washington, 1789 - letter to the Residents of Boston

Heritage Quote

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1808 - letter to Shelton Gilliam

Heritage Quote

"If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?"

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"I have not yet begun to fight!"

-- John Paul Jones (response to enemy demand to surrender, 23 September 1779)

Heritage Quote

"But if we are to be told by a foreign Power ... what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little."

-- George Washington (letter to Alexander Hamilton, 8 May 1796)

Heritage Quote

"It will not be doubted, that with reference either to individual, or National Welfare, Agriculture is of primary importance. In proportion as Nations advance in population, and other circumstances of maturity, this truth becomes more apparent; and renders the cultivation of the Soil more and more, an object of public patronage."

-- George Washington (Eighth Annual Message to Congress, 1796)

Heritage Quote

"If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it, whenever our legislators shall please so to alter the law and shall chearfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused myself."

-- Benjamin Franklin (An Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, viz. The Court of the Press, 12 September 1789)

Heritage Quote

"Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power in the master over the life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common law.... The reasons which we sometimes see assigned for the origin and the continuance of slavery appear, when examined to the bottom, to be built upon a false foundation. In the enjoyment of their persons and of their property, the common law protects all."

-- James Wilson (The Natural Rights of Individuals, 1804)

Heritage Quote

"But they have two other Rights; those of sitting when they please, and as long as they please, in which methinks they have the advantage of your Parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the Breath of a Minister, or sent packing as you were the other day, when it was your earnest desire to have remained longer together."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to William Strahan, 19 August 1784)

Heritage Quote

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 - letter to Judge William Johnson

Heritage Quote

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 15 February 1791)

Heritage Quote

"Besides, to lay and collect internal taxes in this extensive country must require a great number of congressional ordinances, immediately operation upon the body of the people; these must continually interfere with the state laws and thereby produce disorder and general dissatisfaction till the one system of laws or the other, operating upon the same subjects, shall be abolished."

-- Federal Farmer, 1787 - Antifederalist Letter

Heritage Quote

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781 - Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18

Heritage Quote

"Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country. "

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 25, 21 December 1787)

Heritage Quote

"The times that tried men's souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished."

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 13, 1783)

Heritage Quote

"It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Caeser Rodney, 10 February 1810)

Heritage Quote

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to James Warren, 4 November 1775)

Heritage Quote

"The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense. In these are comprehended the regulation of commerce that is, the whole system of foreign intercourse; the support of armies and navies, and of the civil administration."

-- Alexander Hamilton (remarks to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 71

Heritage Quote

"A Man may, if he know not how to save, keep his Nose to the Grindstone, and die not wirth a Groat at last."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1742)

Heritage Quote

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won Country's Honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions. "

-- George Washington (General Orders, 2 July 1776)

Heritage Quote

"No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 48, 1 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 - letter to Charles Hammond

Heritage Quote

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 - Autobiography

Heritage Quote

"Let the pulpit resound with the doctrine and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear of the dignity of man's nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God... Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes and parliaments."

-- John Adams (Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765)

Heritage Quote

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

-- Nathan Hale (before being hanged by the British, 22 September 1776)

Quote-able

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. "

-- John Stuart Mill, English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)

Heritage Quote

"The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
17 June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened. "

-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)

Heritage Quote

"The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations."

-- George Washington, letter of August 20, 1778 to Brig. General Thomas Nelson

Heritage Quote

"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families."

-- Benjamin Rush, 1773 - letter to His Fellow Contrymen: On Patriotism

Heritage Quote

"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Quote-able

“Our problems are both acute and chronic, yet all we hear from those in positions of leadership are the same tired proposals for more government tinkering, more meddling and more control—all of which led us to this state in the first place... We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people.”

—Ronald Reagan

Heritage Quote

"The steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct, will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country. Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom & harmony."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Elbridge Gerry, 29 March 1801)

Heritage Quote

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."

-- John Adams (An Essay on Man's Lust for Power, 29 August 1763)

Heritage Quote

"In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened."

-- George Washington, 1796 - Farewell Address

Heritage Quote

"It is on great occasions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection, that the real voice of the people can be known."

-- George Washington, 1796 - letter to Edward Carrington

Heritage Quote

"As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other."

-- James Madison, 1787 - Federalist No. 10

Heritage Quote

"There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.... In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right...."

-- James Madison, 1786 - letter to James Monroe

Heritage Quote

"When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1805 - Second Inaugural Address

Heritage Quote

"[L]et them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1801 - First Inaugural Address

Heritage Quote

"Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it."

-- James Madison, Federalist No. 41

Heritage Quote

"[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments."

-- Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)

Heritage Quote

"Wish not so much to live long as to live well."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, June 1746)

Heritage Quote

"Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness."

-- George Washington (First Annual Message, 8 January 1790)

Heritage Quote

"How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?"

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 41, 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state."

-- George Mason (speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention,
14 June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow."

-- Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (Federalist No. 62, 1788)

Heritage Quote

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves."

-- John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, 1775 - Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms

Heritage Quote

"Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle."

-- Thomas Jefferson (First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801)

Heritage Quote

"Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to James Madison, 1784)

Heritage Quote

"I am free to acknowledge that His Powers are full great, and greater than I was disposed to make them. Nor, Entre Nous, do I believe they would have been so great had not many of the members cast their eyes towards General Washington as President; and shaped their Ideas of the Powers to be given to a President, by their opinions of his Virtue."

-- Pierce Butler (letter to Weedon Butler, 5 May 1778)

Heritage Quote

"Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations."

-- George Washington, 1796 - Farewell Address

Heritage Quote

"The citizens of the United States of America have the right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were by the indulgence of one class of citizens that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

-- George Washington, 1790 - letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island

Heritage Quote

"When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in the happy hour when the establishment of American Liberty, upon the most firm and solid foundations shall enable us to return to our Private Stations in the bosom of a free, peacefully and happy Country."

-- George Washington, 1775 - address to the New York Legislature

Heritage Quote

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual - or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country."

-- Samuel Adams, 1781 - in the Boston Gazette

Heritage Quote

"Work as if you were to live 100 Years, Pray as if you were to die To-morrow."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1757)

Heritage Quote

"To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity would be to calculate on the weaker springs of human character. "

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 34, 4 January 1788)

Quote-able

"It's not that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so."

-- Ronald Reagan

Heritage Quote

"Your love of liberty - your respect for the laws - your habits of industry - and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness."

-- George Washington (letter to the Residents of Boston, 27 October 1789)

Heritage Quote

"Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants. "

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 1, 27 October 1787)

Heritage Quote

"The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety."

-- Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."

-- John Adams, 1763 - An Essay on Man's Lust for Power

Heritage Quote

"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

-- John Adams, 1814 - letter to John Taylor

Heritage Quote

"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty."

--Fisher Ames, 1788 - speech in the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

Heritage Quote

"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary."

-- Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

Quote-ables

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

– C. S. Lewis

---

"In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty."

– Leo Tolstoy

---

"What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.

– Edward Langley

Heritage Quote

"To render the justice of the war on our part the more conspicuous, the reluctance to commence it was followed by the earliest and strongest manifestations of a disposition to arrest its progress. The sword was scarcely out of the scabbard before the enemy was apprised of the reasonable terms on which it would be resheathed."

-- James Madison (Second Inaugural Address, March 1813)

Heritage Quote

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Johnson, 12 June 1823)

Heritage Quote

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers."

-- John Adams (Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law, 1765)

Heritage Quote

"It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to John Sinclair, 1791)

Heritage Quote

"It will not be doubted, that with reference either to individual, or National Welfare, Agriculture is of primary importance. In proportion as Nations advance in population, and other circumstances of maturity, this truth becomes more apparent; and renders the cultivation of the Soil more and more, an object of public patronage."

-- George Washington, 1796 - Eighth Annual Message to Congress

Heritage Quote

"I hope, some day or another, we shall become a storehouse and granary for the world."

-- George Washington, 1788 - letter to Marquis de Lafayette

Heritage Quote

"Finally, there seem to be but three Ways for a Nation to acquire Wealth. The first is by War as the Romans did in plundering their conquered Neighbours. This is Robbery. The second by Commerce which is generally Cheating. The third by Agriculture the only honest Way; wherein Man receives a real Increase of the Seed thrown into the Ground, in a kind of continual Miracle wrought by the Hand of God in his favour, as a Reward for his innocent Life, and virtuous Industry."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1769 - Positions to be Examined

Quote-ables

[On ancient Athens]: "In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again."

– Edward Gibbon

Heritage Quote

“Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

— Alexander Hamilton

Heritage Quote

"[T]he policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people."

-- George Washington, 1794 - letter to John Adams

Heritage Quote

"Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1801 - letter to Hugh White

Heritage Quote

"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If `Thou shalt not covet' and `Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."

-- John Adams (A Defense of the American Constitutions, 1787)

Heritage Quote

"The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest."

-- George Washington (letter to Alexander Hamilton, 8 May 1796)

Heritage Quote

"The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 23

Heritage Quote

"It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another [for the Executive] to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government; and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in the same hands."

-- 1788 - Federalist No. 71, Category: Separation of Powers

Heritage Quote

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 57, 19 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 74

Heritage Quote

"The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 73, on the Veto Power

Heritage Quote

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1826 - letter to Roger C. Weightman

Heritage Quote

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1774 - Rights of British America

Heritage Quote

"The civil rights of none, shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext infringed."

-- James Madison
1789 - proposed amendment to the Constitution, given in a speech in the House of Representatives

Heritage Quote

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1820 - letter to William Charles Jarvis

Heritage Quote

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781 - Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV

Heritage Quote

"But of all the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this purpose the reading in the first stage, where they will receive their whole education, is proposed, as has been said, to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781 - Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14

Heritage Quote

"It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 71

Heritage Quotes

"Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 34, 4 January 1788)

“National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.”

—John Adams

Heritage Quote

"The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 22

Heritage Quote

“[A] wise and frugal government... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

—Thomas Jefferson

Heritage Quote

"No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous."

-- Benjamin Franklin and George Whaley (Principles of Tade, 1774)

Quote-ables

On constitutional government and helping your neighbor . . .

“Today, when a concerted effort is made to obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals—that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government—that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.”

—Ayn Rand

“This notion of giving both emotional and monetary support to a neighbor only with regard to the recipient’s will is precisely why man needs church to lead a moral life. I am tempted to ask some of these indiscriminant do-gooders whether they would loan Charles Manson a knife under the principle of always helping a fellow human in need. But, instead, I will take a few moments to quote Jesus of Nazareth who said it best as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and Prophets.’ Two things are important, here. First, the commandment to love God comes before the commandment to love our neighbors. Second, the two great commandments are ‘like’ one another but they are not one and the same... Life is full of uncertainty but without God two things really are certain: We will make a mess of our lives, and we will help others do the same.”

—Mike Adams

[Via The Patriot Post.]

Heritage Quote

“Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.”

—Thomas Jefferson

Heritage Quote

"For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 47, 1 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."

-- James Madison, 1792 - letter to Edmund Pendleton

Heritage Quote

"The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex."

-- James Madison, 1788 - Federalist No. 48

Heritage Quote

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 - Autobiography

Heritage Quote

"It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1791 - Opinion on a National Bank

Heritage Quote

"On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?"

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1782 - Notes on Virginia, Query 12

Heritage Quote

"We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge."

-- Fisher Ames, 1789 - speech in the United States House of Representatives

Heritage Quote

“It is not honorable to take mere legal advantage, when it happens to be contrary to justice.”

—Thomas Jefferson

Heritage Quote

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."

-- James Madison (speech in the Virginia constitutional convention, 2 December 1829)

Quote-ables

“The Islamists believe we can’t win; so does The New York Times. But it falls to the American people to decide the issue.”

—Victor Davis Hanson

“We are seeking to create order in Iraq, while al-Qa’ida seeks to create disorder. It is orders of magnitude easier to create chaos than it is to create order. That doesn’t mean it is impossible. But it will require patience and above all, will.”

—Mona Charen

“How the threat of a resurgent al-Qa’ida is ameliorated by a hasty U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, no Democrat, liberal Republican or member of the media has yet explained.”

—Oliver North

Heritage Quote

"In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 52, 8 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Nevertheless, to the persecution and tyranny of his cruel ministry we will not tamely submit - appealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free...."

-- Joseph Warren (American account of the Battle of Lexington, 26 April 1775)

Heritage Quote

"It is not necessary to enumerate the many advantages, that arise from this custom of early marriages. They comprehend all the society can receive from this source; from the preservation, and increase of the human race. Every thing useful and beneficial to man, seems to be connected with obedience to the laws of his nature, the inclinations, the duties, and the happiness of individuals, resolve themselves into customs and habits, favourable, in the highest degree, to society. In no case is this more apparent, than in the customs of nations respecting marriage."

-- Samuel Williams (The Natural and Civil History of Vermont, 1794)

Heritage Quote

"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."

-- George Washington (Fifth Annual Message, 3 December 1793)

Heritage Quote

"I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love."

-- George Washington, 1789 - First Inaugural Address

Heritage Quote

"The consciousness of having discharged that duty which we owe to our country is superior to all other considerations."

-- George Washington, 1788 - letter to James Madison

Heritage Quote

"Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country."

-- George Washington, 1775 - letter to Benedict Arnold

Heritage Quote

"I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good, become honorable by being necessary."

-- Nathan Hale, 1776 - remark to Captain William Hull, who had attempted to dissuade him from volunteering for a spy mission for General Washington

Heritage Quote

"In the next place, the state governments are, by the very theory of the constitution, essential constituent parts of the general government. They can exist without the latter, but the latter cannot exist without them."

-- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Heritage Quote

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

-- John Adams (in Defense of the British Soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre, 4 December 1770)

Land of the free

“Today, whole classes of people get their jollies and puff themselves up by denigrating and denouncing American society. Such people are a major influence in our media, in our educational system and among all sorts of vocal activists. Nothing illustrates their power to distort reality like the way they seize upon slavery to denounce American society. Slavery was cancerous but does anybody regard cancer in the United States as an evil peculiar to American society? It is a worldwide affliction and so was slavery. Both the enslavers and the enslaved have included people on every inhabited continent—people of every race, color, and creed. More Europeans were enslaved and taken to North Africa by Barbary Coast pirates alone than there were African slaves taken to the United States and to the colonies from which it was formed. Yet throughout our educational system, our media, and in politics, slavery is incessantly presented as if it were something peculiar to black and white Americans. What was peculiar about the United States was that it was the first country in which slavery was under attack from the moment the country was created. What was peculiar about Western civilization was that it was the first civilization to destroy slavery, not only within its own countries but in other countries around the world as well. Reality has been stood on its head so that a relative handful of people can feel puffed up or gain notoriety and power. Whatever they gain, the rest of us have everything to lose.”

—Thomas Sowell

Heritage Quote

"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens."

-- George Mason, 1788 - speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention

Heritage Quote

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

-- James Madison, 1788 - Federalist No. 57

Heritage Quote

"Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1817 - letter to John Adams

Heritage Quote

"It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1808 - letter to Richard M. Johnson

Heritage Quote

"I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1808 - letter to Richard M. Johnson

Heritage Quote

"It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."

-- John Adams, 1776 - letter to Abigail Adams

Heritage Quote

"It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1775 - A Summary View of the Rights of British America

Heritage Quote

"The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 21

Heritage Quote

"When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection."

-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, no 71

Heritage Quote

"If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation."

-- Samuel Adams, 1780 - letter to Elbridge Gerry

Heritage Quote

"Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world. Justly understood it is sacred next to those which we appropriate in divine adoration; but in the mouths of some it means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote good."

-- Oliver Ellsworth (A Landholder, No. III, 19 November 1787)

Heritage Quote

"[The President] is the dignified, but accountable magistrate of a free and great people. The tenure of his office, it is true, is not hereditary; nor is it for life: but still it is a tenure of the noblest kind: by being the man of the people, he is invested; by continuing to be the man of the people, his investiture will be voluntarily, and cheerfully, and honourably renewed."

-- James Wilson, 1791 - Lectures on Law

Heritage Quote

"The executive branch of this government never has, nor will suffer, while I preside, any improper conduct of its officers to escape with impunity."

-- George Washington, 1795 - letter to Gouverneur Morris

Heritage Quote

"All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity."

-- George Washington, 1790 - letter to Catherine Macaulay Graham

Heritage Quote

"On the other hand, the duty imposed upon him to take care, that the laws be faithfully executed, follows out the strong injunctions of his oath of office, that he will "preserve, protect, and defend the constitution." The great object of the executive department is to accomplish this purpose; and without it, be the form of government whatever it may, it will be utterly worthless for offence, or defence; for the redress of grievances, or the protection of rights; for the happiness, or good order, or safety of the people."

-- Joseph Story, 1833 - Commentaries on the Constitution

Heritage Quote

"There is little need of commentary upon this clause. No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. It is a suitable pledge of his fidelity and responsibility to his country; and creates upon his conscience a deep sense of duty, by an appeal, at once in the presence of God and man, to the most sacred and solemn sanctions, which can operate upon the human mind."

-- Joseph Story, 1833 - Commentaries on the Constitution

Heritage Quote

"If, for instance, the president is required to do any act, he is not only authorized, but required, to decide for himself, whether, consistently with his constitutional duties, he can do the act."

-- Joseph Story, 1833 - Commentaries on the Constitution

Heritage Quote

"In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1810 - letter to Caeser Rodney

Heritage Quote

"The second office of this government is honorable & easy, the first is but a splendid misery."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1797 - letter to Elbridge Gerry

Heritage Quote

"A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 69

Heritage Quote

"The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 73, on the Veto Power

Heritage Quote

"In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections."

-- John Adams (Inaugural Address, March 1797)

Heritage Quote

"When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Second Inaugural Address, 1805)

Heritage Quote

"May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy."

-- George Washington, 1790 - letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport

Heritage Quote

"A State, I cheerfully admit, is the noblest work of Man: But Man, himself, free and honest, is, I speak as to this world, the noblest work of God...."

-- James Wilson, 1793 - Chisholm v. Georgia

Heritage Quote

"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors."

-- George Washington, 1789 - Thanksgiving Proclamation

Heritage Quote

"The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it."

-- James Madison, 1825 - letter to Frederick Beasley

Heritage Quote

"I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation."

-- George Washington, 1783 - circular letter of farewell to the Army

Heritage Quote

"It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe."

-- James Madison, 1785 - A Memorial and Remonstrance

Heritage Quote

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781 - Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18

Heritage Quote

"And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? or do we imagine we no longer need its assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?"

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1787 - Motion for Prayers in the Constitutional Convention

Heritage Quote

"It is the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping GOD in the manner most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship."

-- John Adams, 1776 - Thoughts on Government

Heritage Quote

"If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 65, 7 March 1788)

Heritage Quote

"If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Maria Cosway, 1786)

Heritage Quote

"First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting; correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private charter gave effulgence to his public virtues;. Such was the man for whom our nation morns."

-- John Marshall (official eulogy of George Washington, delivered by Richard Henry Lee, 26 December 1799)

Heritage Quote

"[He] will live in the memory and gratitude of the wise & good, as a luminary of Science, as a votary of liberty, as a model of patriotism, and as a benefactor of human kind."

-- James Madison, 1826 - on Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Nicholas P. Trist

Heritage Quote

"Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short and embarrassed."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1814 - on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones

Heritage Quote

"[T]he President, who errs as other men do, but errs with integrity."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1795 - on George Washington in a letter to William Branch Giles

Heritage Quote

"Hamilton was indeed a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest, and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet so bewitched & perverted by the British example, as to be under thoro' conviction that corruption was essential to the government of a nation."

-- Thomas Jefferson, on Alexander Hamilton in The Anas

Heritage Quote

"Eloquence has been defined to be the art of persuasion. If it included persuasion by convincing, Mr. Madison was the most eloquent man I ever heard."

-- Patrick Henry, 1790 - on James Madison

Heritage Quote

"His Example is now complete, and it will teach wisdom and virtue to magistrates, citizens, and men, not only in the present age, but in future generations, as long as our history shall be read."

-- John Adams, 1799 - to the U.S. Senate concerning George Washington

Heritage Quote

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"

--Samuel Adams

Heritage Quote

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)

Heritage Quote

"As to Taxes, they are evidently inseparable from Government. It is impossible without them to pay the debts of the nation, to protect it from foreign danger, or to secure individuals from lawless violence and rapine."

-- Alexander Hamilton (Address to the Electors of the State of New York, March 1801)

Heritage Quote

"One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 48, 1 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"Wish not so much to live long as to live well."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1746 - Poor Richard's Almanack

Heritage Quote

"This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that I would address to you something which might possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run; and I too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. Few words will be necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. Farewell."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1825 - letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith

Heritage Quote

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."

-- George Washington, 1748 - The Rules of Civility

Heritage Quote

"Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1771

Heritage Quote

"This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest of ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties."

-- John Jay, Federalist No. 2

Heritage Quote

"Wish not so much to live long as to live well."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1746 - Poor Richard's Almanack

Heritage Quote

"We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times."

-- George Washington, 1777 - letter to Philip Schuyler

Heritage Quote

"In planning, forming, and arranging laws, deliberation is always becoming, and always useful."

-- James Wilson, 1791 - Lectures on Law

Heritage Quote

"If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 33

Heritage Quote

"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government."

-- Mercy Warren, 1805 - History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution

Heritage Quote

"Nevertheless, to the persecution and tyranny of his cruel ministry we will not tamely submit - appealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free...."

-- Joseph Warren, 1775 - American account of the Battle of Lexington

Heritage Quote

"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

-- Thomas Paine, 1776 - American Crisis, No. 1

Heritage Quote

"I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast...would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1814 - letter to Edward Coles

Heritage Quote

"Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 1

Heritage Quote

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1800 - letter to Benjamin Rush

Heritage Quote

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass."

-- George Washington, 1788 - letter to Benjamin Lincoln

Heritage Quote

"We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it."

-- George Washington, 1785 - letter to James Madison

Heritage Quote

"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind."

-- Thomas Paine, 1776 - Common Sense

Heritage Quote

"Is it not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness."

-- James Madison, 1787 - Federalist No. 14

Heritage Quote

"Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence."

-- Joseph Story, 1833 - Commentaries on the Constitution

Heritage Quote

"Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it."

-- James Madison, Federalist No. 41.

Heritage Quote

"We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1805 - Second Inaugural Address

Heritage Quote

"The steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct, will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country. Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom & harmony."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1801 - letter to Elbridge Gerry

Heritage Quote

"I am not a Virginian, but an American."

-- Patrick Henry, 1774 - speech in the First Continental Congress

Heritage Quote

"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened."

-- Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations

Heritage Quote

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States."

-- Noah Webster, 1787 - An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution

Heritage Quote

"No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands]."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1776 - Draft Constitution for the State of Virginia

Heritage Quote

"O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?"

-- Patrick Henry, 1778 - speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention

Heritage Quote

"There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the militia that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 29

Heritage Quote

"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals...[I]t establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."

-- Albert Gallatin, 1789 - letter to Alexander Addison

Heritage Quote

"[W]hereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them; nor does it follow from this, that all promiscuously must go into actual service on every occasion. The mind that aims at a select militia, must be influenced by a truly anti-republican principle; and when we see many men disposed to practice upon it, whenever they can prevail, no wonder true republicans are for carefully guarding against it."

-- Federal Farmer, 1778 - Antifederalist Letter, No.18

Heritage Quote

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

-- Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book

Heritage Quote

"The house of representatives...can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny."

-- James Madison, 1788 - Federalist No. 57

Heritage Quote

"Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state."

-- George Mason, 1788 - speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention

Heritage Quote

"Such will be the relation between the House of Representatives and their constituents. Duty gratitude, interest, ambition itself, are the cords by which they will be bound to fidelity and sympathy with the great mass of the people."

-- James Madison, 1788 - Federalist No. 57

Heritage Quote

"As our president bears no resemblance to a king so we shall see the Senate has no similitude to nobles. First, not being hereditary, their collective knowledge, wisdom, and virtue are not precarious. For by these qualities alone are they to obtain their offices, and they will have none of the peculiar qualities and vices of those men who possess power merely because their father held it before them."

-- Tench Coxe, 1787 - An American Citizen, No.2

Heritage Quote

"The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire and influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism."

-- John Adams, 1787 - A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, vol 1

Heritage Quote

"In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. ... Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."

-- Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, 1788 - Federalist No. 55

Heritage Quote

"They are of the People, and return again to mix with the People, having no more durable preeminence than the different Grains of Sand in an Hourglass. Such an Assembly cannot easily become dangerous to Liberty. They are the Servants of the People, sent together to do the People's Business, and promote the public Welfare; their Powers must be sufficient, or their Duties cannot be performed. They have no profitable Appointments, but a mere Payment of daily Wages, such as are scarcely equivalent to their Expences; so that, having no Chance for great Places, and enormous Salaries or Pensions, as in some Countries, there is no triguing or bribing for Elections."

-- Benjamin Franklin (about the House of Representatives), 1785 - letter to George Whatley

Heritage Quote

"It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1808 - letter to Richard M. Johnson

Heritage Quote

"I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep & a warmer berth below it encircled, with the society of neighbors, friends & fellow laborers of the earth rather than with spies & sycophants...I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1796 - letter to John Adams

Heritage Quote

"It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1775 - A Summary View of the Rights of British America

Heritage Quote

"When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection."

-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, no 71

Heritage Quote

"If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation."

-- Samuel Adams, 1780 - letter to Elbridge Gerry

Heritage Quote

"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1789 - letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy

Heritage Quote

"There is a rank due to the United States, among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war."

-- George Washington, 1793 - Fifth Annual Message

Heritage Quote

"Our own Country's Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions - The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny mediated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth."

-- George Washington (General Orders, 2 July 1776)

Your choice

"You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up, spit at him or kill him; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us."

-- C.S. Lewis

Heritage Quote

"Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 - letter to James Monroe

Heritage Quote

"To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity would be to calculate on the weaker springs of human character."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 34

Heritage Quote

"The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 23

Heritage Quote

"The idea of restraining the legislative authority in the means of providing for the national defense is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened. "

-- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 26

Heritage Quote

"National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman."

-- John Adams, 1815 - letter to James Lloyd

Heritage Quote

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue."

-- John Witherspoon (The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776)

Quotable Quote

"Those who say that you don't have to fight for freedom, don't understand what fascism is."

-- Marek Edelman, 2004

Heritage Quote

"We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed. "

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1824 - letter to John Cartwright

Heritage Quote

"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia. "

-- George Mason, 1778 - speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention

Heritage Quote

"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them. "

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1796 - letter to George Washington

Heritage Quote

"[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them. "

-- Zacharia Johnson, 1778 - speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention

Heritage Quote

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks. "

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1785 - letter to Peter Carr

Heritage Quote

"That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power. "

-- Recommended Bill of Rights from the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1778

Heritage Quote

"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them. "

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1796 - letter to George Washington

Heritage Quote

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."

-- Thomas Paine, 1776 - The American Crisis, No. 1

Heritage Quote

"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

-- Patrick Henry, 1775 - Speech to the Virginia Convention

Heritage Quote

"With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live as slaves."

-- John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, 1775 - Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms

Heritage Quote

"I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love."

-- George Washington, 1789 - First Inaugural Address

Heritage Quote

"The consciousness of having discharged that duty which we owe to our country is superior to all other considerations."

-- George Washington, 1788 - letter to James Madison

Heritage Quote

"Every post is honorable in which a man can serve his country."

-- George Washington, 1775 - letter to Benedict Arnold

Heritage Quote

"I am not influenced by the expectation of promotion or pecuniary reward. I wish to be useful, and every kind of service necessary for the public good, become honorable by being necessary."

-- Nathan Hale, 1776 - remark to Captain William Hull, who had attempted to dissuade him from volunteering for a spy mission for General Washington

Heritage Quote

"[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established...are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 - letter to Judge William Johnson

Heritage Quote

"I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments."

-- James Madison, 1789 - speech in the Congress of the United States

Heritage Quote

"My construction of the constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1819 - letter to Samuel Adams Wells

Heritage Quote

"Good constitutions are formed upon a comparison of the liberty of the individual with the strength of government: If the tone of either be too high, the other will be weakened too much. It is the happiest possible mode of conciliating these objects, to institute one branch peculiarly endowed with sensibility, another with knowledge and firmness. Through the opposition and mutual control of these bodies, the government will reach, in its regular operations, the perfect balance between liberty and power."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - speech to the New York Ratifying Convention

Heritage Quote

"The principle of the Constitution is that of a separation of legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions, except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct terms, it is clearly the spirit of the Constitution, and it ought to be so commented and acted on by every friend of free government."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1797 - letter to James Madison

Another thinker

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

-- John Stuart Mill

Thinking about it

They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war -- as though the absence of war was the same as peace.

-- Dorothy Thompson

Quotable

Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.

-- Lily Tomlin

Heritage Quote

"The convention have done well, therefore, in so disposing of the power of making treaties, that although the President must, in forming them, act by the advice and consent of the Senate, yet he will be able to manage the business of intelligence in such a manner as prudence may suggest."

-- John Jay, 1788 - Federalist No. 64

Heritage Quote

"It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another [for the Executive] to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government; and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in the same hands."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 71

Heritage Quote

The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world.

-- George Washington, 1789 - First Inaugural Address

Heritage Quote

Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.

-- Benjamin Rush, 1783 - letter to John Armstrong

Heritage Quote

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts...in which all religions agree.

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1785 - Westmoreland County Petition

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If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?

-- Benjamin Franklin, to Thomas Paine

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Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indespensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pilliars of human happiness.

-- George Washington, 1796 - Farewell Address

Heritage Quote

Statesmen my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand....The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now, They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.

-- John Adams, 1776 - letter to Zabdiel Adams

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[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths...?

-- George Washington, 1796 - Farewell Address

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An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.

-- John Marshall, 1819 - McCullough v. Maryland

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A rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive.

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 - letter to Lafayette

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Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free.

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1813 - letter to John Wayles Eppes

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Excessive taxation will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1798 - letter to John Taylor

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It is evident from the state of the country, from the habits of the people, from the experience we have had on the point itself, that it is impracticable to raise any very considerable sums by direct taxation.

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1787 - Federalist No. 12

Heritage Quote

It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed - that is, an extension of the revenue.

-- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21

Heritage Quote

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1789 - letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy

Heritage Quote

"What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part [the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them...the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers."

-- James Madison, 1788 - Federalist No. 44