Founders’ Quotes

It is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government.... Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever persuasion, religious or political.

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 republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.

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

It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other.

If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.

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

If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.

The Army (considering the irritable state it is in, its suffering and composition) is a dangerous instrument to play with.

If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.

We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.

There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.

Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.