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Founding Quotes

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Founding Quotes

“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.”

States Spirit Views Party Effects Danger Particular Let Me Discrimination Founding Political Parties Solemn Comprehensive Farewell Address

Book:Monuments of Washington's Patriotism: Containing a Fac Simile of His Publick Accounts Kept During the Revolutionary War; and Some of the Most Interesting Documents Connected with His Military Command and Civil Administration; Embracing, Among Others, the Farewell Address to the People of the United States

Source: Monuments of Washington's Patriotism: Containing a Fac Simile of His Publick Accounts Kept During the Revolutionary War; and Some of the Most Interesting Documents Connected with His Military Command and Civil Administration; Embracing, Among Others, the Farewell Address to the People of the United States

“As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts.”

Mother Father Black Pity Founding

Author:Shirley Chisholm

“It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes we can.”

Night Nations Destiny Written Slave Immigrants Wilderness Shore Creeds Documents Founding Trails Pioneers Unforgiving Abolitionist Yes We Can

Book:Change We Can Believe In

Source: Change We Can Believe In

“Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy."”

Two Wanted America Father Democracy Hated Two Things Republic Founding Monarchy Replica Etymology

Author:Gore Vidal

“The Declaration of Independence is the all-time masterpiece of ideological simplification. There in a single sentence of self-evident truth, the founding Fathers put into clear, easily understandable focus, the broad basis of man's relationship to God, to government, and to his fellow man.”

“Our Founding Fathers were the first to articulate the reasons for their First Amendment, the same reasons given by Learned Hand, and by Justice Brennan in New York Times v. Sullivan . It is a lesson we keep forgetting and must relearn in each succeeding generation.”

Firsts Reason Hands Father Given Justice Forget Generations New York Lessons Succeed Amendments Freedom Of Speech Founding First Amendment New York Times Our Founding Fathers

Author:Gilbert S. Merritt, Jr.

“Schumpter's daring and dashing entrepreneur is now a legendary figure from the distant past - if not from the mythology of capitalism - or is to be found only in the demimonde of business, founding new ice cream parlors or "deep freeze subscription clubs".”

Ifs Past Found Figures Capitalism Entrepreneur Clubs Mythology Ice Daring Cream Founding Ice Cream Freeze Legendary Parlor Dashing Subscription

Author:Paul A. Baran

“The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.”

Humans Kind Reason Facts Father Human Beings Simple Democracy Responsible Corporate Dictatorship Founding Our Founding Fathers

Author:Steven Van Zandt

“It's government's job to respect and protect the rights of the individual. That vision is centrally important to the principle put forth by the Founding Fathers. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in Congress.”

Ifs Believe Important Government Jobs Father Individual Vision Principles Rights Protect Don't Believe Congress Founding

Author:Bill Sali

“We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes -- and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers. You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.”

Knows Fall Father House Causes Prayer Lord Members Rain Senate Representatives Unjust Founding Minnesota Keith House Of Representatives

Author:Bill Sali

“Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption”

Ignorance Corruption Establishment Founding Our Founding Fathers Founding Fathers Christian Us Founding Fathers Founding Fathers Religion Founding Fathers Religious Religious Liberty Founding Fathers Anti Religion Founding Fathers Of America Founding America American Founding Fathers Christian Father Christian Right Religious Truth

Book:James Madison's

Source: James Madison's

“The United States, which has been called the home of the persecuted and the dispossessed, has been since its founding an asylum for emotional orphans. For over three hundred years, refugees from political oppression, religious persecution, famine, poverty, and a rigid class system which limited educational and economic opportunities have been leaving their native villages and cities and coming to the United States in search of freedom and a better life.”

“From the 5th grade through the 4th year of college, our young people are being indoctrinated with a Marxist philosophy and I am fearful of the harvest. The younger generation is further to the left than most adults realize. The old concepts of our Founding Fathers are scoffed and jeered at by young moderns whose goals appear to be the destruction of integrity and virtue, and the glorification of pleasure, thrills, and self-indulgence.”

“Our Founding Fathers drafted the Bill of Rights to ensure that We the People could determine how best to protect our communities.”

People Father Community Rights Protect Bills Determine Founding Our Community Our Founding Fathers Bill Of Rights

Author:Mike Quigley

“It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancées whom they have never seen.”

Persons Purpose Nations Insane Engaged Permit Funeral Spouse Founding Unmarried

Book:Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell

Source: Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell

“We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising.”

Dream Money Grew Promise Grew Up Infinite Advertising Founding Our Dreams Complexion

Book:Save Me the Waltz: A Novel

Source: Save Me the Waltz: A Novel

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.”

“My mother was a great advocate of womens rights, a member of the League of Womens Voters and lifelong member of Planned Parenthood and an advocate of a womans rights in terms of reproductive issues. She was also a founding member of Common Cause in the state of Indiana.”

States Mother Causes Term Common Issues Rights Members League Voters Parenthood Womens Rights Founding Lifelong Indiana Planned Parenthood

Author:Kathryn Lasky

“To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.”

World Way States Political United Principles Roles United States Borders Founding

Book:The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the World's Government in the Twenty-First Century

Source: The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the World's Government in the Twenty-First Century

“Moses became Americas true founding father because he evangelized action; he justified risk. He gave ordinary people the courage to live with uncertainty.”

People Action Father Risk Ordinary Uncertainty Founding Justified Ordinary People Moses

Author:Bruce Feiler

“Forbes has championed entrepreneurism since its founding.”

Founding Forbes

Author:Michael Perlis

“The Founding Fathers worried that some common impulse of passion might lead many to subvert the rights of the few. It's a rational fear, one that is played out endlessly.”

Might Passion Father Common Rights Rational Worried Impulse Founding

Author:David Harsanyi

“Our country was founded on a distrust of government. Our founding fathers gave power to the people to keep an eye on government. So when politicians say, 'Trust me,' they're actually being very un-American.”

People Country Government Eye Father Politician Our Country Founding Distrust Trust Me Our Founding Fathers

Author:David Duchovny

“I believe the American people are more concerned with a man's views and abilities than with the church to which he belongs. I believe the founding fathers meant it when they provided in Article VI of the Constitution that there should be no religious test for public office. And I believe that the American people mean to adhere to those principles today.”

“Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.”

Source: Selected Writings of James Madison

“There was never a promise that race relations in America would be entirely resolved during my presidency or anybody's presidency. I mean, this has been a running thread - and - and fault line in American life and American politics since its founding.”

Mean Has Beens Would Be Running America Lines Race Promise Relation Faults Thread Presidency Founding American Politics Race Relations American Life

Author:Barack Obama

“What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.”

Source: The writings of Thomas Jefferson

“When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their fox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.”

“Our purpose in founding the city was not to make any one class in it surpassingly happy, but to make the city as a whole as happyas possible.”

Whole Purpose Cities Class Founding

Author:Socrates

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America's founding fathers.”

America Father Moral Republican Conservative Silly Gentleman Founding

Author:Ronald Reagan

“It is evident from their writings that the Founding Fathers would never have tolerated the separation that we have embraced today. They knew that religious principles provided morality and self-control - the lifeblood for the survival of any self-governing community.”

Writing Self Today Christian Father Community Religious Principles Morality Survival Separation Self Control Evident Founding Governing

Author:David Barton

“No one expects this nation to become a theocracy, where Christianity is the only value, but we do indeed say that the essential values and founding principles of the nation should not be ignored.”

Should Christian Values Nations Religious Christianity Principles Essentials Ignored Founding Theocracy

Author:D. James Kennedy

“Today the separation of church and state is America is used to silence the church... The way the concept is used today is totally reversed from the original intent... It is used today as a false political dictum in order to restrict the influence of Christian ideas... To have suggested the state separated from religion and religious influence would have amazed the Founding Fathers.”

“If we are negative by nature, we Americans are more human than most. The Founding Fathers loved going negative. Heck, the Declaration of Independence is one long negative ad.”

Ifs Humans Long Father Negative Independence Ads Declaration Founding Declaration Of Independence

Author:Paul Begala

“The Founding Fathers were nothing more than a bunch of snobby English shits.”

America Father Bunch Founding Snobby

Author:Donald Freed

“In the months ahead, I will leave the Department of Justice, but I will never -- I will never -- leave the work. I will continue to serve and try to find ways to make our nation even more true to its founding ideals.”

Way Trying Father Politics Nations Leadership Work Justice History Democracy Policy Months Ideals Constitution Strategy Ideology Department Founding

Author:Eric Holder

“The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both intestinal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the first the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. Both led to similar ends; the first to the founding of the English nation, and the second to the founding of the American. Both were strangely interlinked; for it was men of the old military and not of the new economic mind - men, such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh - who founded the English colonies in America.”

Men Mind Firsts Ideas War Ends America Order Nations Economic Military Conflict England Rose Civil War Founding Clash Colony Feudalism Economic Order Raleigh

Author:J. F. C. Fuller

“It is our boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws.”

Source: Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious

“In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars.”

Source: Washington's Farewell Address to the People of the United States of America: Published in September, 1796

“Theologians have felt no hesitation in founding a system of speculative thought on the teachings of Jesus; and yet Jesus was never an inhabitant of the realm of speculative thought.”

Jesus Felt Teaching Realms Founding Theologian Hesitation

Book:Christianity and the Social Crisis

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis

“If some of these [Republican] folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the 'flat earth society.' They would not believe that the world was round.”

Ifs World Believe Has Beens Earth Republican Members Rounds Folks Flats Sail Founding Columbus

Author:Barack Obama

“A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.”

Source: The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1778-1802

“Within forty years of their arrival in the Plymouth colony, the first white settlers were afraid their children had lost the dedication and religious conviction of the founding generation. Ever since, Americans have looked to the next generation not only with love and solicitude but with a good measure of anxiety, worrying whether they themselves were good parents, fearful that their children would not turn out well.”

Source: All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure

“They [the Founding Fathers] were intent upon establishing a Christian commonwealth in accordance with the principle of self-government. They were an inspired body of men. It has been said that God sifted the nations that He might send choice grain into the wilderness ... Who can fail to see it in the hand of Destiny? Who can doubt that it has been guided by a Divine Providence?”

“They are our brothers, these freedom fighters.... They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance. We cannot turn away from them, for the struggle here is not right versus left; it is right versus wrong.”

Men Turns Father Left Moral Struggle Brother Equal Men And Women Brave Resistance Fighter Founding Versus Our Founding Fathers Brave Man Freedom Fighter

Book:Speaking my mind: selected speeches

Source: Speaking my mind: selected speeches

“One legislator accused me of having a 19th century attitude on law and order. That is a totally false charge. I have an 18th century attitude. That is when the Founding Fathers made it clear that the safety of law abiding citizens should be one of government's primary concerns.”

“Corporations are a good thing. But corporations should not be running our government... They have driven the American economy since its founding, and the prosperity of our country is largely dependent on the free operation of corporations. But some corporations don't want free markets, and they don't want democracy. They want profits.”

Want Should Country Government Running Economy Democracy Good Things Profit Prosperity Driven Our Country Corporations Operations Dependent Founding Free Market American Economy

Author:Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“There is nothing more important in my life than my relationship with God and my faith. I have been so driven to my knees to pray for His guidance, for His wisdom, for His grace and for His Strength. I'm never going to tell anybody else how to live, I'm never going to preach to anybody else and tell them you must do that. But I sure would like to see more Americans give it a try and seek the guidance that our Founding Fathers sought and were able to [then] craft documents that allowed America to become the greatest, strongest, healthiest, most prosperous nation on earth.”

“The idea of separating church and state by the Founding Fathers of America was freedom from the domination of one form of religion, because many of them left England, because they were persecuted by the church, because they want to express their Christian faith in a different way. So it was a bit of warfare between Christians.”

“The Founding Fathers of America never intended to stop people expressing their faith in the public square. But unfortunately that is the way it is happened.”

People Way America Father Happened Squares Founding Founding Fathers Of America

Author:John Lennox