"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition."
—Thomas Jefferson (Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 15 February 1791)
"The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained."
—George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, so much as downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation."
John Adams
Me thinks Mr. Adams a psychic!
Jillian
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"Disappointments are inevitable. Discouragement is a choice."
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." Thomas Jefferson
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson
Sorry, couldn't resist these either....soooo, how many of the Founding Fathers are rolling in the graves now?
"I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments."
-- James Madison (speech in the Congress of the United States, 17 June 1789)
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty." John Adams
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MacE AKA Steve Ewing
I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. Job 19:25
"Non sibi sed patriae!"
Reviresco (I grow strong again) Clan MacEwen motto
Audaciter (Audacity) My Ewing Family Motto (descendants of Baron William Ewing of Glasgow, born about 1630)
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." Abraham Lincoln
"Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." from "Epitoma Rei Militaris," by Vegetius
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams--October 11, 1798
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge. ~Mark Twain
"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives."
—John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1756
"It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors."
–George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789
"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that [the gifts of God] should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow citizens . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens."
-Abraham Lincoln, Thanksgiving Proclamation 1863
I give thanks he made this an annual holiday.
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"May those who love us, love us. And those who hate us, may God turn their hearts. And if he doesn't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping." -Celtic Proverbs
Grateful am I to have a sword in which to defend myself at all times, blessed am I for the days I need not use it.
One can hardly read many of the quotes of the founders and still maintain that our country was not founded by Christians, based on Christian principles.
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