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Founding Quotes

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Founding Quotes

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

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Author:John Adams
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“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”

EarthAmericaLibertyWonderMankindDesignSceneIndependenceIgnorantOpeningPatrioticReverenceProvidenceFounding4th Of JulyIlluminationEmancipationOur Founding FathersSettlementUs Founding FathersForefathersUs Independence Day
Book:The Portable John Adams
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“Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.”

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Author:Evan Bayh
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“You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.”

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Author:Charles A. Beard
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“We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

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Author:Thomas Paine
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“Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.”

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Author:Thomas Paine
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“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

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Book:The Political Works of Thomas Paine: In Two Volumes
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“You should see what our Founding Fathers used to say to each other and in the early part of our nation. But what they were able to do, especially in Philadelphia in 1787, four months, they argued about what a House should be, what a Senate should be, the power of the president, the Congress, the Supreme Court. And they had to deal with slavery.”

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Author:Colin Powell
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“The founding document of the United States of America acknowledges the Lordship of Jesus Christ because we are a Christian nation.”

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Book:The Collected Works of Pat Robertson: The New Millennium/the New World Order/the Secret Kingdom/3 Books in 1
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“The perfection of our union, especially our commitment to equality of opportunity, has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, 'In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.'”

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Author:Paul Ryan
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“Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

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Book:Elements of useful knowledge: containing a historical and geographical account of the United States
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“All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”

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Book:History of the United States: to which is prefixed a brief historical account of our [English] ancestors, from the dispersion at Babel, to their migration to America, and of the conquest of South America, by the Spaniards
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“The power of the silent filibuster to distort Senate politics is now accepted on Capitol Hill and by the press as normal and not worth mentioning. Let me be the skunk at this political garden party and say this stinks. Representative government was not designed to work this way by the Founding Fathers.”

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Author:Juan Williams
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“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”

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Book:The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 7: 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814
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“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!”

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Author:Samuel Adams
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“Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.”

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Book:The wit and wisdom of Benjamin Franklin: a treasury of more than 900 quotations and anecdotes
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“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

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Book:The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
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“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.”

ShouldChildrenFreedomLibertyPrinciplesDemocracyEducatedPatrioticFoundingFreedom And LibertyFreedom Of ThoughtFreedom LibertyOur Founding FathersPublic EducationAmerican LibertyRevolution Founding FathersAmerican FreedomEducation And Freedom
Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
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“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”

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Book:Jefferson: Political Writings
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“another tradition to politics, a tradition (of politics) that stretched from the days of the country’s founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done.”

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Book:The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
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“As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

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Author:John Adams
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“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 is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”

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Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
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