Quotes on Our Founding Fathers

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

We beseech [God] to pardon our national and other transgressions.

We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.

Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.

To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day (the 4th of July)? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior?.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom - go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!

Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy - the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man - endeavored to crush your well-earned & well-deserved fame.

Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.

...It would be more consistent that we call [the Bible] the work of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

The rights essential to happiness. . . . We claim them from a higher source - from the King of kings and Lord of all the earth.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.

Question with boldness even the existence of a god.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.