Founders’ Quotes

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.

[G]iving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.

I never consider a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty?

[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life.

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

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.

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

[I]n the mouths of some [Liberty] means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote good.

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

Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.

A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.

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

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.

In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.

It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he 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; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him.