Founders’ Quotes

A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained.

Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground.

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.

If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?

The instrument by which it [government] must act are either the AUTHORITY of the laws or FORCE. If the first be destroyed, the last must be substituted; and where this becomes the ordinary instrument of government there is an end to liberty!

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. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy.

Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one.

Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths...?

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.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.

All men are equally bound by the laws of nature, or to speak more properly, the laws of the Creator.

Equal laws protecting equal rights; the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country.

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.

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

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.

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever persuasion, religious or political.

When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another.