Founders’ Quotes

I expect that a just, dispassionate and steady conduct, will at length rally to a proper system the great body of our country. Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom & harmony.

I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.

[T]he happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

The authority, the interests, and the affections of the people at large are the only foundation, on which a superstructure proposed to be at once durable and magnificent, can be rationally erected.

In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate — look to his character.

The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

[W]ithout virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.

If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.

The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all citizens.

[H]e who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual.

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

[T]he germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body ... 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 from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.

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

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.