Founders’ Quotes

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.

Wish not so much to live long as to live well.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

[W]here I know a mind to be ingenuous, and to need only truth to set it to rights, I cannot be passive.

Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.

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.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.

When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in the happy hour when the establishment of American Liberty, upon the most firm and solid foundations shall enable us to return to our private stations in the bosom of a free, peacefully and happy country.

To restore ... harmony, ... to render us again one people acting as one nation should be the object of every man really a patriot.

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

But the mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.

No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one ever will.

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

In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature.

[T]he policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them.

Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you.

[T]hat form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics.