A Worthy Quote

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Legislators invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 1785

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position."

--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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

[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

"The belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities impressed with it."

--James Madison, letter to Frederick Beasley, 1825

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1782

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Maria Cosway, 1786

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

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

--John Adams, Novanglus No. 7, 1775

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers to disseminate early discontents, I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct, will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country. Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom & harmony."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Elbridge Gerry, 1801

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground."

--Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address, 1805

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant with the apparent objects and intent of the Constitution."

--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The instrument by which it [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

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"My ardent desire is, and my aim has been ... to comply strictly with all our engagements foreign and domestic; but to keep the United States free from political connections with every other Country. To see that they may be independent of all, and under the influence of none. In a word, I want an American character, that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves and not for others; this, in my judgment, is the only way to be respected abroad and happy at home."

--George Washington, letter to Patrick Henry, 1775

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.... In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right."

--James Madison, letter to James Monroe, 1786