George Washington

"To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."

--George Washington

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Thomas Jefferson

"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, letter to Richard M. Johnson, 1808

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Thomas Jefferson

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

--Thomas Jefferson

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George W. Bush

"If we ensure that America's children succeed in life, they will ensure that America succeeds in the world."

--George W. Bush

George Washington

"A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation, and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come."

--George Washington (1778)

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George Washington

"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, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789

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John Adams

"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

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Douglas Adams

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I've ended up where I needed to be."

--Douglas Adams


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Thomas Jefferson

"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, letter to William Charles Jarvis, 1820

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Patrick Henry

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth - and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."

--Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Convention, 1775

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John Adams

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

--John Adams

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Rudyard Kipling

"The Russian is a delightful person 'til he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental, he is charming. It is only when he insists on being treated as the most easterly of Western peoples instead of the most westerly of Easterns that he becomes difficult to handle.

--Rudyard Kipling

Marquis de Custine

"Whenever you are unhappy, go to Russia. Anyone who has come to understand that country will find himself content to live anywhere else."

--Marquis de Custine
Russia, 1839

James Madison

"[A]mbitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 46, 1788

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George Washington

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily."

--George Washington

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John Adams

"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, 1797

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George Washington

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily."

--George Washington

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Thomas Jefferson

"Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

--Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

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George Washington

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."

--George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

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Fisher Ames

"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, 1789

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John Adams

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

--John Adams,
Novanglus No. 7, 1775

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Benjamin Franklin

"Have you something to do to-morrow; do it to-day."

--Benjamin Franklin

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Q

Q: "Now pay attention, 007, I've always tried to teach you two things: First, never let them see you bleed;"

Bond: "And second?"

Q: "Always have an escape plan"

James Madison

"It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute."

--James Madison, letter to the Dey of Algiers, 1816

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Benjamin Franklin

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

--Benjamin Franklin

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Thomas Jefferson

"[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, 1823

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Samuel Adams

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men."

--Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

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Samuel Adams

"[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)

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Samuel Adams

"No people will tamely surrender their liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and virtue is preserved. 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, 1775

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Alexander Hamilton

"[T]he fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace."

--Alexander Hamilton

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John Adams

"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

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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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George Washington

"There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation."

--George Washington

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Thomas Jefferson

"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 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 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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Joseph Story

"The plain import of the clause is, that congress shall have all the incidental and instrumental powers, necessary and proper to carry into execution all the express powers. It neither enlarges any power specifically granted; nor is it a grant of any new power to congress. But it is merely a declaration for the removal of all uncertainty, that the means of carrying into execution those, otherwise granted, are included in the grant."

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

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Proverbs 29:9

"If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet."

--Proverbs 29:9

President Thomas S. Monson

"The future is as bright as your faith."

--President Thomas S. Monson,
President and Prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

President Thomas S. Monson

"In the performance of our responsibilities, I have learned that when we heed a silent prompting and act upon it without delay, our Heavenly Father will guide our footsteps and bless our lives and the lives of others. I know of no experience more sweet or feeling more precious than to heed a prompting only to discover that the Lord has answered another person's prayer through you."

-- President Thomas S. Monson
President and Prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Groucho Marx

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."

--Groucho Marx