Paul Kengor Quotes

Quotes about:

• Which founders have these presidents cited - and why? What did, say, President [Ronald] Reagan's view of George Washington, or President [Bill] Clinton's view of Thomas Jefferson, tell us about their view of America and where they intended to lead the country?In many cases, it told us a lot about the president.

  Paul Kengor

  Country, Views, America

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• [John] McCain references favorite presidents like Teddy Roosevelt. Hillary cited Eleanor Roosevelt.

  Paul Kengor

  President, Eleanor, Mccain

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• In part, it's almost surely a failure of modern education, whether K through 12 or higher education, or really both. Barack Obama went to Ivy League institutions like Columbia, which are reputed to be among America's top colleges. And yet, this very recent product of those American institutions is not publicly articulating an appreciation of the American founding or the founders and their vision for America.

  Paul Kengor

  Appreciation, College, Ivy

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• Reagan thought that school prayer was important because it was crucial to begin each day reminding students that their inalienable rights came to them from their Creator and not from government bureaucrats.

  Paul Kengor

  Prayer, School, Rights

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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• President Bush, yes, spent money like a drunken sailor, and left the nation with a record $400-billion deficit. President Obama, however, is spending far more money than Bush, with a record $1.8 trillion deficit projected for his first year.

  Paul Kengor

  Years, President, Records

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• As has been reported, and is unmistakably evident to all but the most naïve, federal employees have been ordered to exploit this crisis, to make the government shutdown as uncomfortable as they can. The White House is actively soliciting complaints from the general public on 'how the government shutdown has affected you.' These testimonies are tools sought for the propaganda kit; the better to agitate with.

  Paul Kengor

  White, Government, House

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• [ Alexis de] Tocqueville said it in 1835, and it's as true today as it was then: 'Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is more needed in democratic societies than in any other.'

  Paul Kengor

  Liberty, May, Today

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• Learning is a good thing, but unless it's tempered by faith and a love of freedom, it can be very dangerous indeed.

  Paul Kengor

  Good Things, Dangerous

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• It is interesting that liberals don't mind a strong faith at all. When it's their guy with a strong faith - whether it's Jimmy Carter or Woodrow Wilson or Harry Truman - that's just great. FDR inscribing Bibles and sending them to the troops. God bless him! But when a Republican president cites Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher, as George W. Bush did on a famous occasion, then, well, the liberals cry out that [Tomás de] Torquemada is on the loose and warn gravely of the coming Inquisition.

  Paul Kengor

  Strong, Jesus, Interesting

  Source: www.christianpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• Reagan loved and respected his father, Jack Reagan. But if there was a father figure to Reagan in the religious sense, it was Ben Cleaver. What Reagan's father didn't provide spiritually, from a fatherly point of view, Cleaver did.

  Paul Kengor

  Religious, Father, Views

  Source: www.christianpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• Reagan saw the Soviet Union as evil, all right, and not only because it was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people but also because it was atheistic. [Vladimir] Lenin said that religious faith and communism were incompatible.

  Paul Kengor

  Religious, People, Evil

  Source: www.christianpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• [Gerald] Ford and [Jimmy] Carter, in fact, were huge disappointments to me. Think about this: They were the presidents around the time of America's historic bicentennial, and yet rarely quoted the founders.

  Paul Kengor

  Disappointment, Thinking, America

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• [Barack] Obama isn't pointing to anyone, and certainly doesn't like it when others note (correctly) that his influences were the likes of Saul Alinsky, the Chicagoan and modern founder of community organizing, or Frank Marshall Davis, the communist journalist and agitator from Chicago who mentored Obama in Hawaii in the latter 1970s, and who Obama warmly acknowledges in his memoirs.

  Paul Kengor

  Community, Chicago, Hawaii

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• Many of these failures can be laid at the feet of the awful state of American higher education, and especially the way in which our secular universities have divorced their instruction from timeless truths like faith and freedom. Many of the professors at these places plainly don't respect the founders and, in particular, the religious foundation of the founders.

  Paul Kengor

  Religious, Feet, Foundation

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• The American founding is not just about a group of people, a group of men. It is about an ideal: Both a vision and understanding of the very essence of democracy, constitutional government, a representative republic, and the remarkably powerful concept of being endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

  Paul Kengor

  Powerful, Men, Rights

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• Speaking of [Ronald] Reagan on the faith of the founders, he was particularly fond of George Washington, who he cited nearly 200 times, and almost twice as much as all the presidents since [John F.]Kennedy combined.

  Paul Kengor

  President, Founders

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• [Ronald Reagan] called the image of [George] Washington praying on his knees in Valley Forge "the most sublime image in American history."

  Paul Kengor

  Sublime, Valleys, Knees

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• I noticed some time ago that neither of the candidates are quoting the founders. If they are, they're doing it so rarely that I haven't noticed, or enough to be negligible. Certainly, neither is invoking the image of [George] Washington at Valley Forge or the Shining City Upon a Hill. In addition to this being true for John McCain and Barack Obama, it was true for Hillary Clinton as well.

  Paul Kengor

  Cities, Shining, Valleys

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• A surprise to others, but not to me, since I've watched this closely for eight years now, is how George W. Bush has internalized the founders' belief that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with a certain inherent yearning for freedom. In turn, Bush has applied this to his vision for the Middle East, believing that a democratic transformation in that region is possible, given that inherent desire for liberty within all hearts, including the hearts of Arab Muslims. People disagree with that, which is fine, but that's the Bush vision.

  Paul Kengor

  Believe, Heart, Eight

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• In the middle of Hillary Clinton's push for national healthcare in 1993, Bill Clinton cited Thomas Jefferson's concern for health issues as, somehow, apparently indicative of a need for federal management of the nation's healthcare system.

  Paul Kengor

  Issues, Needs, Bills

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• I was disappointed in how [Bill] Clinton, like [Jimmy] Carter, used the founders to argue for huge expansions in federal power, clearly beyond what the founders could have ever conceived.

  Paul Kengor

  Expansion, Bills, Arguing

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• I was a child or didn't live through those presidents prior to [Ronald] Reagan, and thus didn't realize how little attention they had paid to the founders.

  Paul Kengor

  Children, President, Attention

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• When [Jimmy] Carter did quote them, he quoted them in what I believe were misapplications, such as arguing for the creation of a federal Department of Education. In one case, Carter quoted [Tomas] Jefferson's and [George] Washington's appreciation of education and then, in a leap, implied that they would be delighted that he was creating a giant federal bureaucracy for education.

  Paul Kengor

  Appreciation, Believe, Creating

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

  4 Copy quote

• Frankly, neither president [Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter] was an inspiring figure; so, maybe their lack of inspiration by the founders shouldn't surprise us.

  Paul Kengor

  Inspiration, President, Surprise

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

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• Reagan didn't want to wear his faith on his sleeve in a political way. Reagan thought that was egregious, and he was first turned off by it in the 1976 campaign when he thought Jimmy Carter was doing it. Reagan simply did not want ever to appear to be using faith for political purposes.

  Paul Kengor

  Political, Campaigns, Purpose

  Source: www.christianpost.com

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