Benjamin Rush

"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, letter to His Fellow Countrymen: On Patriotism, 1773

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Thomas Jefferson

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

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

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Thomas Paine

"We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in."

--Thomas Paine, The Crisis, no. 4, 1777

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Thomas Jefferson

"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

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Thomas Jefferson

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

--Thomas Jefferson

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Benjamin Franklin

"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."

--Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, 1774

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Oliver Ellsworth

"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, 1787

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John Adams

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the 'latent spark'... If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?"

--John Adams, the Novanglus, 1775

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George Washington

"The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period."

--George Washington, Circular to the States, 1783

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Ken Blackwell

"Dogs don't bark at parked cars."

--Ken Blackwell

Rush Limbaugh

"You're defined by your enemies."

--Rush Limbaugh

John Marshall

"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, McCullough v. Maryland, 1819

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James Monroe

"How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of ."

--James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

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Tim Kizziar

"Our greatest fear… should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter."

--Tim Kizziar

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George Mason

"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, 1788

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Colonel John Brooks

"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, 1778

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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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Declaration of Independence

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson

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

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.

Samuel Adams

"[T]he People alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."

--Samuel Adams

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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Thomas Jefferson

"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, 1791

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Thomas Jefferson

"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

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Noah Webster

"The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head."

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

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George Washington

"[T]here 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."

--George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

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John Adams

"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, 1778

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Benjamin Franklin

"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

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Thomas Paine

"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

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George Mason

"[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, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

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James Madison

"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, 1788

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Thomas Jefferson

"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, letter to Peter Carr, 1785

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Thomas Jefferson

"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, Notes on the Virginia Query 19, 1781

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John Adams

"We ought to consider what is the end of government before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all divines and moral philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man."

--John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

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Thomas Jefferson

"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, 1819

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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 Witherspoon

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction."

--John Witherspoon

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John Adams

"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, 1798

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Benjamin Franklin

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

--Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1746

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Patrick Henry

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."

--Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

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Fisher Ames

"We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary. It follows the substance like its shade; but while a man walks erect, he may observe that his shadow is almost always in the dirt. It corrupts, it deceives, it inflames. It strips virtue of her honors, and lends to faction its wildfire and its poisoned arms, and in the end is its own enemy and the usurper's ally. It would be easy to enlarge on its evils."
--Fisher Ames, 1807

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John Adams

"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families... In vain are Schools, Academies, and Universities instituted, if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years... The vices and examples of the parents cannot be concealed from the children. 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

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Lord Baden Powell

"An invaluable step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual."

--Lord Baden Powell
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