A Worthy Quote

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors."

--John Adams, letter to the young men of the Philadelphia, 7 May 1798

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."

--George Washington, Circular to the States, 9 May 1753

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired."

--Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 23 February 1775

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 48

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them."

--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, 6 July 1775

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we can."

--John Adams, letter to Count Sarsfield, 3 February 1786

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms an essential part of both."

--James Wilson, law lectures at the University of Pennsylvania

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy."

--Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, circa 1774

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 25, 21 December 1787

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"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."

--Fisher Ames, letter to George Richard Minot, 23 June 1789

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Martha Jefferson, 5 May 1787

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government."

--Mercy Warren, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805

[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

"Let the pulpit resound with the doctrine and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear of the dignity of man's nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God... Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes and parliaments."

--John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage."

--John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776