George Washington

"To form a new Government, requires infinite care, and unbounded attention; for if the foundation is badly laid the superstructure must be bad."

--George Washington, letter to John Augustine Washington, 1776

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Thomas Jefferson

"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, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781

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Thomas Jefferson

"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, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787

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Thomas Jefferson

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to The Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland, 1809

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Tench Coxe

"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, 1787

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Thomas Jefferson

"[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, First Inaugural Address, 1801

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James Madison

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect."

--James Madison, 1833

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James Madison

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788

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George Washington

"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, 1790

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Alexander Hamilton

"The instrument by which [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!"

--Alexander Hamilton, Tully, No. 3, 1794

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Thomas Paine

"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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Vaclav Havel

"The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him."

--Vaclav Havel
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George Washington

"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, 1789

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George Mason

"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

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James Madison

"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

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H. L. Mencken

"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

--H. L. Mencken
US editor (1880 - 1956)

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Rush Limbaugh

"I love polar bears, too....when they're rugs!

--Rush Limbaugh
31 October 2011

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John Stuart Mill

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

--John Stuart Mill

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James Madison

"[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

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James Wilson

"It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness."

--James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1791

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Oscar Wilde

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

--Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde

"I am not young enough to know everything."

--Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde

"I am not young enough to know everything."

--Oscar Wilde

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Thomas Paine

"As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight."

--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

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Sam Houston

"Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may."

--Sam Houston

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John Adams

"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, letter to John Taylor, 1814

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Thomas Paine

"Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries; tis time to part."

--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

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John Adams

"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

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Thomas Jefferson

"[T]he flames kindled on the 4 of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1821

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George Washington

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

--George Washington, First Annual Message, 1790

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Alexander Hamilton

"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, 1787

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Benjamin Franklin

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

--Benjamin Franklin, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1776

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George Washington

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

--George Washington, First Annual Message, 1790

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George Washington

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

--George Washington, First Annual Message, 1790

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Alex's Dad

"To be early, is to be early. To be on time, is to be on time. To be late, is to be late. To be a tyrannical dilettante, is to be a tyrannical dilettante. Words mean things."

--Alex's Dad

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John Adams

"[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, 1763


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Marcus Brutus

"Sic semper tyrannis."
-- Marcus Junius Brutus

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Fisher Ames

"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, 1788

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James Madison

"[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

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James Madison

"[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787

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John Wooden

"If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive a doer makes mistakes."

John Wooden
UCLA's Men's Basketball Coach, 1948-1975

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Theodore Roosevelt

"If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness."

--Theodore Roosevelt
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Theodore Roosevelt

"If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness."

--Theodore Roosevelt
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James Wilson

"The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it."

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

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George Washington

"No morn ever dawned more favorable than ours did; and no day was every more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm."

--George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1786

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Alexander Hamilton

"[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, 1802

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Thomas Jefferson

"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. [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, Opinion on a National Bank, 1791

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James Madison

"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, letter to Edmund Pendleton, 1792

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Abraham Lincoln (December 3, 1861) Address to Congress re: SLAVERY, NOT CAPITOLISM!!!

"In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.

"It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

"Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class--neither work for others nor have others working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families--wives, sons, and daughters--work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital; that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class.

"Again, as has already been said, there is not of necessity any such thing as the free hired laborer being fixed to that condition for life. Many independent men everywhere in these States a few years back in their lives were hired laborers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just and generous and prosperous system which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and improvement of condition to all. No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost."

Read more: State of the Union Address: Abraham Lincoln (December 3, 1861) — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/73.html#ixzz1ZSghELXp

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."

--Sir Winston Churchill 
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Joseph Story

"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

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George Washington

"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, 1777

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William Shakespeare

"That sir,
Which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain, and leave thee in the storm."

-William Shakespeare

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Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

"Sin, my worst enemy before,
Shall vex my eyes and ears no more,
My inward foes shall all be slain,
Nor Satan break my peace again."

By Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
"Sweet Is The Work," verse 5.

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Thomas Paine

"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

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Ronald Reagan

"A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job. And a recovery is when Jimmy Carter (think: Barak Obama) loses his!"

--Ronald Reagan

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Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

By Oscar Wilde
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Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

"One of the greatest mistakes is to judge polices and programs by their intentions rather than their results."

--Milton Friedman

Alex's Dad

"Parenting is a game of ripening."

-Alex's Dad

Alexander Hamilton

"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, 1790

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Alexis de Tocqueville

"To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

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James Madison

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that  it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 48

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George Washington

"I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another."

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

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John Dickinson & Thomas Jefferson

"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 & Thomas Jefferson,  Declaration of the Cause and Necessity of Taking up Arms, 1775

Thomas Jefferson

"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, letter to John Cartwright, 1824

Cesare Beccaria

"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

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