A Few Quotes From Our Founding Fathers

"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety." ~Benjamin Franklin
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. 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
"If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight!" ~Patrick Henry
"(T)he foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; ...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
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." ~John Adams
"Political interest can never be separated in the long run from moral right"

"Can the liberties of a nation be sure when we remove their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people, that these liberties are a gift from God? ~Thomas Jefferson
The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." ~Patrick Henry

"The citizens of the U.S. are responsible for the greatest trust ever confided to a political society"

"We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." James Madison

"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." ~Thomas Jefferson

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." ~George Washington

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves." ~William Pitt

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

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity. ~Thomas Jefferson

"The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world not destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them ... the weak will become prey to the strong." ~Thomas Paine

"Americans [have] the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust their people with arms." ~James Madison

"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms . . ." ~Samuel Adams