Founders’ Quotes

Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.

We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.

I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful.

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

It is not honorable to take mere legal advantage, when it happens to be contrary to justice.

Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.

The 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. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people.

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

The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.

Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.

Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Let the American youth never forget, that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils, and sufferings, and blood of their ancestors; and capacity, if wisely improved, and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to their latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence.

A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.

The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.

To prevent crimes, is the noblest end and aim of criminal jurisprudence. To punish them, is one of the means necessary for the accomplishment of this noble end and aim.

There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.