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Founders' Quote Database

Fisher Ames

speech in the United States House of Representatives — 1789
Category: Congress
We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge.

George Washington

letter to Marquis de Lafayette — 1788
Category: Constitution
Next Monday the Convention in Virginia will assemble; we have still good hopes of its adoption here: though by no great plurality of votes. South Carolina has probably decided favourably before this time. The plot thickens fast. A few short weeks will determine the political fate of America for the present generation, and probably produce no small influence on the happiness of society through a long succession of ages to come.

Alexander Hamilton

letter to James Bayard — 1802
Category: Constitution
[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.

John Adams

Thoughts on Government — 1776
Category: Constitution
A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general. That elevation of sentiment inspired by such a government, makes the common people brave and enterprising. That ambition which is inspired by it makes them sober, industrious, and frugal.

James Madison

letter to William Cogswell — 1834
Category: Constitutional Convention
You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me "the writer of the Constitution of the United States." This was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands.

James Madison

in a — 1835
Category: Constitutional Convention
Whatever may be the judgement pronounced on the competency of the architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of the edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and solemn conviction ... that there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to David Humphreys — 1789
Category: Constitutional Convention
The example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the state, instead of assembling armies, will be worth as much to the world as the former examples we had give them. The constitution, too, which was the result of our deliberation, is unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to men.

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist No. 73, on the Veto Power — 1788
Category: The Presidency
The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones.

John Adams

quoted in a letter from Rufus King to Theophilus Parsons — 1788
Category: Constitutional Convention
The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.

George Washington

letter to Marquis de Lafayette — 1788
Category: Constitutional Convention
It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the Delegates from so many different States ... should unite in forming a system of national Government, so little liable to well founded objections.

James Madison

speech in the Congress of the United States — 1789
Category: Separation of Powers
Nothing has yet been offered to invalidate the doctrine that the meaning of the Constitution may as well be ascertained by the Legislative as by the Judicial authority.

James Wilson

Of the Study of Law in the United States — 1790
Category: Constitutional Interpretation
The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton — 1788
Category: Constitutional Interpretation
[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Wilson Nicholas — 1803
Category: Constitutional Interpretation
Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.

Thomas Jefferson

Draft Kentucky Resolutions — 1798
Category: Constitutional Interpretation
The construction applied...to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power...ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.

Thomas Jefferson

Opinion on a National Bank — 1791
Category: Congress
It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.

Thomas Jefferson

on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones — 1814
Category: Founders on Founders
[H]is was the singular destiny and merit, of leading the armies of his country successfully through an arduous war, for the establishment of its independence; of conducting its councils through the birth of a government, new in its forms and principles, until it had settled down into a quite and orderly train; and of scrupulously obeying the laws through the whole of his career, civil and military, of which the history of the world furnishes no other example.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Albert Gallatin — 1808
Category: Constitutional Interpretation
[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to William Johnson — 1823
Category: Constitutional Interpretation
On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Samuel Adams Wells — 1821
The Declaration of Independence...[is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.

John Hancock

upon signing the Declaration of Independence — 1776
Category: Declaration of Independence
There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!

Benjamin Franklin

at the signing of the Declaration of Independence — 1776
Category: Declaration of Independence
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

James Madison

letter to Thomas Jefferson — 1825
Category: Declaration of Independence
On the distinctive principles of the Government ...of the U. States, the best guides are to be found in...The Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental Act of Union of these States.

Alexander Hamilton

Federalist No. 71 — 1788
Category: Separation of Powers
It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another [for the Executive] to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government; and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in the same hands.

Samuel Adams

letter to James Warren — 1775
Category: Education
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.

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“Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the FEW, not for the MANY.” —James Madison (1788)

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