George Washington - 1789

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Founders' Quote Daily

"Your love of liberty - your respect for the laws - your habits
of industry - and your practice of the moral and religious
obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual
happiness."

-- George Washington (letter to the Residents of Boston, 27
October 1789)

Reference: Maxims of George Washington, Schroeder, ed. (139)

Alexander Hamilton on politicions - 1787

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Founders' Quote Daily

"Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the
greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious
court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants. "

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 1, 27 October 1787)

Reference: Hamilton, Federalist No. 1 (35)

Thomas Jefferson on the Constitution

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Founders' Quote Daily

"Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written
Constitution.  Let us not make it a blank paper by construction."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803)

Reference: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition),
Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., 10:419.

John Adams - 1765

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Founders' Quote Daily

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among
the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to
knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has
given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this,
they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible,
divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge;
I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers."

-- John Adams (Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law, 1765)

Reference: Our Sacred Honor, Bennett, 253.

Bill of Rights

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Founders' Quote Daily

"[T]he people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are
left in full possession of them."

-- Zacharia Johnson (speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention,
25 June 1778)

Reference: The Debates of the Several State..., Elliot, vol. 3
(646)

Men/Women of wisdom

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Founders' Quote Daily

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be,
first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern,
and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in
the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping
them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 57, 19 February 1788)

Reference: Madison, Federalist No. 57.

Founders' Quote Daily - 08-19-07

The Patriot Post
Founders' Quote Daily

"The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the
right of the people at large or considered as individuals...[I]t
establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and
which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of."

-- Albert Gallatin (letter to Alexander Addison, 7 October 1789)

Reference: That Every Man Be Armed: The Evolution
of a Constitutional Right, Halbrook; original MS. in
N.Y. Hist. Soc.-A.G. Papers, 2