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

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"This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still."

--Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

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"A people ... who are possessed of the spirit of commerce, who see and who will pursue their advantages may achieve almost anything."

--George Washington

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[MacEoghainn]

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin's original recommendation for the motto of the United States.

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"His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man."

--Thomas Jefferson about George Washington

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[MacEoghainn]

"Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country." George Washington

The story of how George Washington saved our new country (again)

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"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Spencer Roane, 9 March 1821


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"It might be demonstrated that the most productive system of finance will always be the least burdensome."

--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 35

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"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

--Thomas Jefferson

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"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

--Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book, 1774-1776


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[MacEoghainn]

You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it: But I do not take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavour in a few Words to gratify it. Here is my Creed: I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental Principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do, in whatever Sect I meet with them.

Benjamin Franklin

[MacEoghainn]

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.--Thomas Jefferson

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"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, - who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia."

--George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 14 June 1778

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"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 that force, you are inevitably ruined."

--Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 5 June 1778

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"[G]overnment, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one."

--Thomas Paine


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"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, counties or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws."

--John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787-1788

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