Favorite Founding Father/American Revolutionary Quotes

[Ragnar]

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

- George Washington (attributed)

 

[Ragnar]

yes. taking the fruits of labor and giving it to Lockheed Martin executives is indeed shameful

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

- Samuel Adams

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

- John Stuart Mill

 

[Ragnar]

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5puwTrLRhmw[/ame]

"One of the greatest favors that can be bestowed on the American people is economy in government"

- Calvin Coolidge

On edit:

The above Coolidge quote is "fail". Silent Cal was not a founding father. My bad Agit8r.

 

[Agit8r]

"the Romans fought for Empire. The Pride of that haughty people was to domineer over the rest of Mankind. But this is not our Object. We contend for the Liberty of our Country and the Rights of human Nature. We hope to succeed in so righteous a Contest; and it is our Duty to aquire such Habits, and to cultivate in those who are to come after us such Principles and Manners as will perpetuate to our Country the Blessings which are purchasd with our Toils and Dangers"

-- Samuel Adams; letter to Alexander McDougall (May, 13, 1782)

 

[Ragnar]

"Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth."

- George Washington

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."

- George Washington

 

[Agit8r]

"It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal."-- Thomas Paine; from Agrarian Justice

 

[Agit8r]

"Religious proclamations by the Executive... seem to imply and certainly nourish the erronious idea of a national religion. The idea just as it related to the Jewish nation under a theocracy, having been improperly adopted by so many nations which have embraced Xnity, is too apt to lurk in the bosoms even of Americans, who in general are aware of the distinction between religious & political societies. The idea also of a union of all to form one nation under one Govt in acts of devotion to the God of all is an imposing idea. But reason and the principles of the Xn religion require that all the individuals composing a nation even of the same precise creed & wished to unite in a universal act of religion at the same time, the union ought to be effected thro' the intervention of their religious not of their political representatives. In a nation composed of various sects, some alienated widely from others, and where no agreement could take place thro' the former, the interposition of the latter is doubly wrong"

-- James Madison; from Detached Memoranda

 

[Kalam]

"We shall, by and by, want a world of hemp more for our own consumption." - Adams

 

[Agit8r]

"As the Federal Constitution is a copy, though not quite so base as the original, of the form of the British Government, an imitation of its vices was naturally to be expected"

-- Thomas Paine, Open letter to George Washington (1796)

 

[Agit8r]

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusetts: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen-yard in order."

--Thomas Jefferson; letter to William S. Smith (Nov. 13, 1787)

 

[Agit8r]

"we both consider the people as our children, and love them with parental affection. But you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses; and I as adults whom I freely leave to self-government."

-- Thomas Jefferson (to P. S. Dupont De Nemours, April 24, 1816)

 

[Agit8r]

"Free commerce and navigation are not to be given in exchange for restrictions and vexations, nor are they likely to produce a relaxation of them"

--Thomas Jefferson: from Report on Foreign Commerce (1793)

 

[Agit8r]

"The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."

-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison (1785)

 

[Agit8r]

"Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, one thousand pounds, is necessary or sufficient for the support of a family, consequently the second thousand is of the nature of a luxury, the third still more so, and by proceeding on, we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not improperly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property or the accumulation of it by bequest."

-- Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part the Second (1792)

 

[Agit8r]

"England exhibits the most remarkable phaenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it’s government and the probity of it’s citizens... I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

--Thomas Jefferson; letter to George Logan (Nov. 12, 1816)

 

[Agit8r]

"To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse."

--Thomas Jefferson; letter to Hugh White (May, 2, 1801)

 

[Agit8r]

"One of the divisions consists of those, who from particular interest, from natural temper, or from the habits of life, are more partial to the opulent than to the other classes of society; and having debauched themselves into a persuasion that mankind are incapable of governing themselves, it follows with them, of course, that government can be carried on only by the pageantry of rank, the influence of money and emoluments, and the terror of military force. Men of those sentiments must naturally wish to point the measures of government less to the interest of the many than of a few, and less to the reason of the many than to their weaknesses... The anti republican party, as it may be called, being the weaker in point of numbers, will be induced by the most obvious motives to strengthen themselves with the men of influence, particularly of moneyed, which is the most active and insinuating influence. It will be equally their true policy to weaken their opponents by reviving exploded parties, and taking advantage of all prejudices, local, political, and occupational, that may prevent or disturb a general coalition of sentiments."

--James Madison; from A Candid State of Parties (1792)

 

[Agit8r]

"In every political society, parties are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort. 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expence of another. 5. By making one party a check on the other, so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented, nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism."

James Madison; from Parties (Jan. 23, 1792)

 

[Agit8r]

 

[Two Thumbs]

I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.... Nathan Hale

As he gazed upon the hangmans noose.

That takes balls.