Founding Quotes - Page 11

• Moses is our true founding father.

  Bruce Feiler

  Father, Moses

  "This Month in Moses: How the Bible’s Greatest Hero Became America’s Greatest Icon" by Bruce Feiler, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 14, 2010.

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• The people "have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge- I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers."

  John Adams

  Character, Mean, Divine Right

  'A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law' (1765)

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• We Americans can be rightly proud of the fact that the right to the free and unfettered exercise of religion is a primary principle in the vision and founding of our country. It defines us as a people, and has uniquely contributed to making this nation great.

  Salvatore J. Cordileone

  Country, Exercise, People

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• The rules are all wrong today. The mandate of the media really does pre-date the founding of the United States.

  Richard Dreyfuss

  Media, United States, Doe

  "Richard Dreyfuss Holds Media Accountable: Civics Education Leads to Political Civility" by Mike Smith, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 22, 2011.

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• The honest and serious student of American history will recall that our Founding Fathers managed to write both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution without using the term 'democracy' even once. No part of any of the existing state Constitutions contains any reference to the word. [The men] who were most influential in the institution and formulation of our government refer to 'democracy' only to distinguish it sharply from the republican form of our American Constitutional system.

  Clarence Manion

  Father, Writing, Men

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• Our commitment to this founding principle is especially relevant today. Americans are united as rarely before in compassion and generosity for our fellow citizens whose lives have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The powerful winds and floodwater of Katrina tore away the mask that has hidden from public view the many Americans who are left out and left behind.

  Edward Kennedy

  Powerful, Commitment, Compassion

  "Roberts: 'I Have No Agenda'". www.foxnews.com. September 13, 2005.

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• Our Founding Fathers were proud that Americans were trusted with arms because they knew that only when people are armed could they truly be thought of as free citizens. And that's where the circle closes. Those who want to deprive you of your right to keep and bear arms are intending to deprive you of your freedom, period. Like the criminals their policies encourage, these elitists know that it is always best to disarm victims before you enslave them.

  Charley Reese

  Father, Circles, People

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• And if we are the ones not actively involved in electing those godly men and women and if people aren't involved in helping godly men in getting elected than we're going to have a nation of secular laws. That's not what our founding fathers intended and that's certainly isn't what God intended.

  Katherine Harris

  Father, Godly, Men

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• Do or do not. There is no try," says Yoda, the bewitching philosopher warrior created by George Lucas in Star Wars. Yoda is quoted at least as often as the founding fathers on this topic.

  Jerry I. Porras

  Stars, Father, War

  Jerry I. Porras, Stewart Emery, Mark Thompson (2006). “Success Built to Last: Creating a Life That Matters”, p.128, Pearson Education

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• Despite our founding principles and the many ways our constitution has protected individual liberties, we do, let's admit it, have a long history of shutting people out--african americans, women, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities--and throughout our history, we have found too many ways to divide and exclude people from their ownership of the law and protection under the law.

  Hillary Clinton

  Gay, Law, Long

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• At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

  John Paul Stevens

  Government, Self, People

  "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310". United States Supreme Court case No. 08-205, caselaw.findlaw.com. January 21, 2010.

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• Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our founding fathers, they were believers. And George Washington, he saw faith in God as basic to life.

  Sarah Palin

  Father, Trying, Saws

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• When our founding fathers put their signatures on the Declaration of Independence, those 56 brave people, most of whom by the way were clergymen, they said that we had certain inalienable rights given to us by our creator, and among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, life being one of them. I still believe that.

  Mike Huckabee

  Father, Believe, Pursuit Of Happiness

  The Republican Presidential debate on Fox News Channel in Orlando, Fla., www.nytimes.com. October 21, 2007.

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• The Founding Fathers realized that "the power to tax is the power to destroy," which is why they did not give the Federal government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say, the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give more than a third of their income to the Federal government.

  Ron Paul

  Father, Government, Giving

  Ron Paul (2008). “Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets, Honest Money, Private Property”, p.84, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics. The judgment of history leans heavily on the outcome of success or failure; it spells the difference between the traitor and the patriotic hero. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father.

  Saul Alinsky

  Father, Hero, Mean

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.34, Vintage

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• The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly "veneration of wealth " are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined.

  Bill Moyers

  Father, Office, Constitution

  "Moyers on Democracy". Book by Bill D. Moyers. Introduction, p. 3, 2008.

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• The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation is ever dangerous.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Faith Religion, Office, Superstitions

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin. Reports and opinions while Secretary of State”, p.167

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• Even though these are different times, right now we are particularly thinking about what is leadership, and Washington's qualities are as needed today as they were at the founding of this great nation.

  Igor Babailov

  Thinking, Patriotism, Quality

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• It is hard for us to admit we have a sin nature because we live in this system of checks and balances. If we get caught, we will be punished. But that doesn't make us good people; it only makes us subdued. Just think about the Congress and Senate and even the president. The genius of the American system is not freedom; the genius of the American system is checks and balances. Nobody gets all the power. Everybody is watching everybody else. It is as if the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse.

  Donald Miller

  Father, Men, Thinking

  Donald Miller (2012). “Blue Like Jazz: Movie Edition: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”, p.18, Thomas Nelson

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• The reality is that the founding fathers were land speculators. The fact was that you couldn't vote in this country if you did not own land, and that was basically you had to be a white man who owned land. Now how did they get that land? They basically had to steal it from someone, and that would be probably the Indians. And so most of the initial founding fathers were, while they may have had some really nice ideas about democracy, they had a lot of issues with people of color. They had a lot of issues with people who held things that they coveted.

  Winona LaDuke

  Country, Father, Nice

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• Isn't our choice really not one of left or right, but of up or down? Down through the welfare state to statism, to more and more government largesse accompanied always by more government authority, less individual liberty, and ultimately, totalitarianism, always advanced as for our own good. The alternative is the dream conceived by our Founding Fathers, up to the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with an orderly society.

  Ronald Reagan

  Dream, Father, Government

  Ronald Reagan (2004). “Speaking My Mind: Selected Speeches”, p.212, Simon and Schuster

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• We should not be surprised that the Founding Fathers didn't foresee everything, when we see that the current Fathers hardly ever foresee anything.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Father, Should, Currents

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• You can look at founding father Alexander Hamilton nevertheless assuring - assuring - the countrymen in Federalist 78 that the role of the federal courts under the proposed Constitution would be limited.

  Sam Brownback

  Father, Roles, Looks

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• If virtue & knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslav'd. This will be their great security.

  Samuel Adams

  People, Liberty, Virtue

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• The government's only proper job is to protect individual rights against violence by force or fraud ... to protect men from foreign invaders ... to settle disputes among men according to objective laws ... The greatness of the Founding Fathers was how well they understood this issue and how close some of them came to understanding it perfectly.

  Ayn Rand

  Jobs, Father, Greatness

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