Founders’ Quotes

Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism.

To prevent crimes, is the noblest end and aim of criminal jurisprudence.

We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth — and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts.

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.

Let justice be done though the heavens should fall.

[The press] is a precious pest, and a necessary mischief, and there would be no liberty without it.

It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness.

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.

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.

The fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace.

The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed.

I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.

Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction.

We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.

War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice.

Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.

We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary. It follows the substance like its shade; but while a man walks erect, he may observe that his shadow is almost always in the dirt.