Founders’ Quotes

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

As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature.

Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.

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

It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government.

Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.

In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason.

Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.

The 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.

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you.

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

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

The mild voice of reason, pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest, is but too often drowned, before public bodies as well as individuals, by the clamors of an impatient avidity for immediate and immoderate gain.

It is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently, and according to their circumstances; to protect them according to the dictates of prudence; and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness, their respectability and happiness.

Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.

The Declaration of Independence ... [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.