A Worthy Quote

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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." --George Washington, First Inaugural Address, 1789

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters 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, letter to James Madison, 1785

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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 despotism." --James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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