Founders Quotes - Page 18

• How significant is Aristotle? Well, I wouldn’t want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotelianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the entire history of Western thought.

  Edward Feser

  Philosophy, Mistake, Want

  Edward Feser (2008). “The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism”, St Augustine PressInc

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am ever mindful of the legacy of my grandfather, the founder of this Kingdom, who had said to me that he perceived his life as a link in a continuous chain of those who served our nation and that he expected me to be a new and strong link in the same chain.

  King Hussein I

  Strong, Grandfather, Legacy

  17 Copy quote

• The goal of this office will not be to favor one religious group over another - or even religious groups over secular groups. It will simply be to work on behalf of those organizations that want to work on behalf of our communities, and to do so without blurring the line that our founders wisely drew between church and state.

  Barack Obama

  Religious, Organization, Goal

  "Obama Faith Council". www.pbs.org. February 6, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Make Earth Day Every Day.”  While we might not always live up to this ideal, I try to keep this quote from Denis Hayes, founder of the Earth Day Network and president of Seattle’s Bullitt Foundation, in mind when I need a little extra motivation to be a better environmentalist: “Listen up, you couch potatoes: each recycled beer can saves enough electricity to run a television for three hours.

  Denis Hayes

  Running, Motivation, Beer

  9 Copy quote

• If Obamacare is allowed to stand - and Congress is allowed to make the purchase of government-endorsed health insurance compulsory - there will be no meaningful limit on Washington's reach into the lives of the American people. That is certainly not what the Founders intended.

  John Cornyn

  Meaningful, Government, Obamacare

  7 Copy quote

• As I hope
  For quiet days, fair issue, and long life,
  With such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den,
  The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion
  Our worser genius can, shall never melt
  Mine honour into lust, to take away
  The edge of that day's celebration,
  When I shall think or Phoebus' steeds are founder'd
  Or Night kept chain'd below.

  William Shakespeare

  Strong, Night, Thinking

  William Shakespeare, Charles Symmons (1844). “The Dramatic Works of William Shakspeare: From the Text of the Corrected Copies of Steevens and Malone : with a Life of the Poet”, p.13

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention and the first wave of nuclear power. And this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be part of it-we mean to lead it.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Mean, Space

  Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Program, delivered 12 September 1962, Rice Stadium, Houston, Texas

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• The founders of the great world religions, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tzu, Mohammed, all seem to have striven for a worldwide brotherhood of man; but none of them could develop institutions which would include the enemy, the unbeliever.

  Geoffrey Gorer

  Jesus, Men, World Religions

  21 Copy quote

• In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

  Hugo Black

  War, Government, Afterlife

  "New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713". Concurring opinion, 1971.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• [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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• So now we're after a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a guy-and-gal thing. To the founders, this would have been like an amendment requiring the sun to rise in the east; it would fall under the category of obvious truths that the Constitution need not address.

  James Lileks

  Fall, Guy, East

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Over the long term, the eclipse rate of great civilizations being overtaken is 100%. So you know how it's going to end. (Laughter) I'm more optimistic about the staying power of what's good in this country. But just because you have a wonderful spouse doesn't mean you should treat her badly. You have the feeling that some of the old virtues [that made this country great] are lessening. But there's so much good and so much strength left that I would not expect this country to suddenly founder.

  Charlie Munger

  Country, Laughter, Optimistic

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Maybe the most interesting find in my research is that it is clear that Ronald Reagan, among all modern presidents, plainly rediscovered the founders.

  Paul Kengor

  Interesting, President, Research

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Like some great swelling river, the powers of the federal government have today breached their constitutional levees and spilled into countless areas of life never anticipated by the founders.

  Joel Miller

  Government, Rivers, Today

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Source: www.visionandvalues.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It used to be the custom in this country that when you had made a career and were mature in judgment, you went to the Senate to give something back t the Republic. The idea that at age 25 you go out and buy a blow dryer and starting running for office is not what the founders had in mind

  Gore Vidal

  Running, Country, Blow

  5 Copy quote

• Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective- a new world order-can emerge... We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders.

  George H. W. Bush

  Nwo, Sight, Order

  8 Copy quote

• If you're co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do. If you don't do your chores, the company won't succeed. No task is too menial.

  Elon Musk

  Tasks, Want, Might

  "Elon Musk And Richard Branson Give Their Best Advice To Entrepreneurs" by Max Nisen and Alexandra Mondalek, www.businessinsider.com. August 08, 2013.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• For nearly five decades the World Federalists have worked to promote a strengthened UN and more effective institutions of global governance. I offer my personal endorsement. Now a great opportunity has opened for the realization of the dreams of the UN's founders.

  Walter Cronkite

  Dream, Opportunity, Realization

  4 Copy quote