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"To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to laud the more distinguished Character of Christian."
-- George Washington, orders to troops at Valley Forge, May 2, 1778

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passion unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net."
-- President John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798

"The Bible carries with it the history of the creation, the fall and the redemption of man, and discloses to him, in the infant born in Bethlehem, the Legislator and Savior of the world."
-- President John Quincy Adams, Feb. 27, 1844

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost."
--President John Quincy Adams

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781

"Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong."
--Theodore Roosevelt US 1916 26th president of US (1858 - 1919)

"I wish I were younger. What inclines me now to think you may be right in regarding [evolution] as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders."
 - C. S. Lewis in a letter to a friend.

On Democracy

"It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams

"In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character...." --Noah Webster, Letters to a Young Gentleman Commencing His Education, 1789

"A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species." --James Madison

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. ...[T]hat alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own." --James Madison

"The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty." --Fisher Ames

"I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. ... Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope." --Ronald Reagan

"So what's the difference between republican and democratic forms of government? John Adams captured the essence of the difference when he said, 'You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.' Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights." --Walter Williams

"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government." --George Washington

"Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one." --James Madison

"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

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson

"There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!" --John Hancock (upon signing the Declaration of Independence)

"It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression...that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary;...working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped." --Thomas Jefferson

"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."  -- James Madison (speech at the Constitutional Convention, 7/11/1787) - Reference: Advice to My Country, Mattern ed. (79); original The Papers of John Madison, Congressional Series, vol. 10 (98)
 

"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech." --Benjamin Franklin

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice." --Albert Einstein

 

"What is in the air there in Washington, what is in the water? What is wrong with them? This is not a rhetorical question. I think it is unspoken question No.1 as Americans look at so many of the individuals in our government. What is wrong with them?" --Peggy Noonan

Thomas Jefferson, who I cited earlier in writing the Declaration of Independence, years later, in 1820, saw the bleak future for our judiciary and predicted future judicial subversion. He said, “The judiciary of the United States is the subtle core of individuals and miners constantly working underground to undermine the foundations of our fabric. A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing, but independence of the will of the Nation is a travesty.”  quoted in speech by Congressman Ted Poe

 

"The Declaration of Independence...[is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man."  -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Samuel Adams Wells, 12 May 1821)  Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., vol. 15 (200)

 

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow."  -- Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (Federalist No. 62, 1788)  Reference: The Federalist

 

"Politics is supposed be the second oldest profession. I have come to realise that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."  -- Ronald Reagan


"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." -- Alexander Hamilton (The Farmer Refuted, 23 February 1775)  Reference: Selected Writings and Speeches of Alexander Hamilton, Frisch (21)
 

"A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie, 1820. ME 15:298

 

 

 

 

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