Below, you will find some of my favorite quotes from the United States founding fathers. Have a favorite quote not listed? Post it in the comment section, and I will gladly add it to the list!
Ben Franklin
A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
Distrust and caution are the parents of security.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Energy and persistence conquer all things.
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.
No nation was ever ruined by trade.
The U. S. Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Patrick Henry
Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?
Fear is the passion of slaves.
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
I know no way of judging the future but by the past.
Perfect freedom is as necessary to the health and vigor of commerce as it is to the health and vigor of citizenship.
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, sir, was the primary object.
Alexander Hamilton
A promise must never be broken.
A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.
It’s not tyranny we desire; it’s a just, limited, federal government.
Power over a man’s subsistence is power over his will.
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.
There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.
Thomas Jefferson
A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto. Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
George Washington
Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples’ liberty’s teeth.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it. Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.
The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon. The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.
