Quotes Of The Founding Fathers, Insight into their hopes for the country

That is a quote that needs to be "beaten" into every law school student, lawyer, and judge in this country (I'd mention politicians, unfortunately most of them are a lost cause).

Patch;

The Quotes of your Founding Fathers are the rhetoric of men who dreamed of building the perfect society, a Utopia on Earth", perhaps it is only the Gods who have that power.


Camac.

All great things are built on dreams!

Slàinte,    

Patch    

"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth -- and listen to the song of that syren, till she transforms us into beasts."

--Patrick Henry

Slàinte,    

Patch    

The system the Founding Fathers gave was not designed to be perfect, nor to be operated by perfect people. Their plan and that government would work fine if we just follow their advice. If we return to their principles the system will work again.

"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a price upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated."

Thomas Paine

"A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the object of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained."

--James Madison

Slàinte,    

Patch    

"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it 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, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy."

--U.S. Senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

Slàinte,    

Patch    

"Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country."

--Noah Webster, On the Education of Youth in America, 1788


Slàinte,    

Patch     

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness."

--George Washington, Circular to the States, 9 May 1753


Slàinte,    

Patch    

"A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired."

--Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 23 February 1775

Slàinte,    

Patch    

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

Thomas Jefferson

"It will not be denied that power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes of power, as they may in their nature be legislative, executive, or judiciary, the next and most difficult task is to provide some practical security for each, against the invasion of the others."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 48

Slàinte,    

Patch    

"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

--Patrick Henry

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Patch    

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them."

--Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, 6 July 1775

Slàinte,    

Patch