Founders’ Quotes

Speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject.

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.

Public affairs go on pretty much as usual: perpetual chicanery and rather more personal abuse than there used to be.

The right of freely examining public characters and measures ... has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right.

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

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

To prevent crimes, is the noblest end and aim of criminal jurisprudence. To punish them, is one of the means necessary for the accomplishment of this noble end and aim.

Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.

The consciousness of having discharged that duty which we owe to our country is superior to all other considerations.

No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America.

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport 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.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

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.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.