A Worthy Quote

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The law of nature and the law of revelation are both Divine: they flow, though in different channels, from the same adorable source. It is indeed preposterous to separate them from each other."

--James Wilson, Law of Nature, 1804

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earlthy blessings -- give us that precious jewel, and you may take every things else! ... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel."

–Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Convention, 1788

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power."

–John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that the nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it, nay that absolute monarchs, will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for purposes and objects merely personal."

–John Jay, Federalist No. 4, 1787

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence."

–Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?"

–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Michael Megear, 1823

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The government must be a weak one indeed, if it should forget that the good of the whole can only be promoted by advancing the good of each of the parts or members which compose the whole."

–John Jay, Federalist No. 64, 1788

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."

–George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"It is very imprudent to deprive America of any of her privileges. If her commerce and friendship are of any importance to you, they are to be had on no other terms than leaving her in the full enjoyment of her rights."

–Benjamin Franklin, Political Observations

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each. So, if a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty. If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply."

–John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the spot of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck."

–Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith, 1822

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens."

–George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value."

–Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men."

–Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21, 1787

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"A wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, 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 felicities."

–Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801