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Informing Folks Efficiently |
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Thomas Jefferson
"Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world."
Daniel Webster
"In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson
"No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country."
Daniel Webster
James Madison
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin
"I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master."
Thomas Jefferson
Letter to David Hartley
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Thomas Jefferson
"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!"
Patrick Henry
"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend on God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die."
George Washington
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated."
Thomas Paine
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom... go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have...a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers."
John Adams
"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint."
Daniel Webster
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
Thomas Paine
"...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it ever come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence."
Daniel Webster
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?"
Thomas Jefferson
"We Paid the Price ONCE!"
Inscription on the LIBERTY BELL
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Thomas Jefferson
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up the force, you are inevitable ruined."
Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Franklin
James Madison
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
Thomas Jefferson
Letter to William Ludlow
"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself"
Alexander Hamilton
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."
Thomas Paine
"Fear is the foundation of most governments."
John Adams
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force."
George Washington
"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
"The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
Samuel Adams
"The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun."
Patrick Henry
"Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation."
James Madison
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
Richard Henry Lee
Founding Father
"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence."
George Washington
"Besides, the advantage of being armed forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would certainly shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did."
James Madison
"To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
George Mason
"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot endorse unjust laws by the sword because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."
Noah Webster
Daniel Webster
"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
James Madison
chief architect of the Constitution
"Character is much easier kept than recovered."
Thomas Paine
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
Benjamin Franklin
"Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow."
Elias Boudinot
president of the Continental Congress, later a congressman from NJ, and president of the American Bible Society
"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security."
Samuel Adams