Founding Quotes - Page 13

• Lincoln is quoted more often than he's understood, and he understood that the founding principle of our nation is, in fact, the Declaration of Independence.

  Daniel Fried

  Independence, Principles, Facts

  Source: www.politico.com

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• That government is best which governs least.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Government

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Ralph Waldo Emerson 29; O'Sullivan 1; Shipley 1

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• I think its rather peculiar. It's not in keeping with our founding documents, our founding vision. But I'd guess you'd have to ask the Obama administration why they purged all this language from their platform. There sure is a lot of mention of government, so I guess I would put the onus on them to answer why they did all these purges of God.

  Paul Ryan

  Thinking, Government, Vision

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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.'

  Paul Ryan

  Commitment, Opportunity, Giving

  "Rep. Paul Ryan on Saving the American Idea". dailysignal.com. October 26, 2011.

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• We will not try to replace our founding principles, we will reapply our founding principles.

  Paul Ryan

  Trying, Principles

  Republican National Convention VP Nomination Acceptance, delivered 29 August 2012, Tampa, Florida

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• America is great not because it's a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.

  John Podhoretz

  Team, Rights, America

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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.

  Barack Obama

  Inspirational, Commitment, Responsibility

  Second Democratic Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, delivered 6 September 2012, Charlotte, North Carolina

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• There's been a systematic propagandizing of American citizens for 30 years to make us forget what America is supposed to be and what our rights are and what our system is and what our core principles are. And one of them since 1807 has been this right that the founding generation put in place, to make sure that military troops would never, ever, ever be deployed in the United States of America for civilian policing.

  Naomi Wolf

  Military, Years, America

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The modern era of liberalism, the one we're living in, really has as its focus or foundation that America is unjust, immoral, and corrupt, and from the days of our founding.

  Rush Limbaugh

  America, Focus, Foundation

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Here's a nation, one of the founding pillars was freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And yet, we have imposed upon people restrictions on what they can say, on what they can think. And the media is the largest proponent of this, crucifying people who say things really quite innocently.

  Benjamin Carson

  Thinking, Media, Expression

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• One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.

  Ron Paul

  Father, Government, Political

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• What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

  Thomas Paine

  Giving, Heaven, Would Be

  The American Crisis, 19 Dec. 1776

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• The Senate, compared to the House, is where things are supposed to slow down, by design, Founding Father design. The Founding Fathers were hell-bent to stop government action. The Constitution limited government. And that's why people like Obama and Democrats call it a charter of negative liberties because it limits government. It's an anti-government, pro-citizen document. And the founders wanted to make it hard.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Father, Government, People

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Never mind that from the 1600s until the late twentieth century the population the United States was 85% white, 12% black, and there have been changes demographically in the United States since the days of its founding. So they're trying to tell you that the United States' greatness happened because of diversity. Well, go back and look at the days the country was founded, and they do. When they do that, they see how racist and bigoted this country was. they see the seeds for bigotry and racism and discrimination were sown at the founding, is how it's now taught.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Country, Greatness, White

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Stop and think of what happened in America. The melting pot, yeah, it happened. Stop and think of what happened, from the first days of the founding. You have to go back to the Pilgrims. You have to include the Pilgrims in the founding. Why they came. What they learned on the way. What they learned after they got here. The Pilgrims, like everybody else, tried to establish a socialist collective. Bombed out. Didn't work. We know this, the governor wrote about it himself, William Bradford.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Thinking, America, Way

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Why do you think great leaders and great orations are coincident with wars, revolutions, and the founding or ending of governments and states? Common interests then are so clear that speeches are effortlessly drawn, but at present neither the facts nor the consequences are sufficiently clear to make oratory legitimate. This is the kind of war that will wind on and make fools of its partisans and opponents both.

  Mark Helprin

  War, Thinking, Government

  Mark Helprin (2005). “A Soldier of the Great War”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• People from all over the world came to America and assimilated into a single culture rooted in the founding, which is rooted in individual liberty and primacy of citizen over government. Everybody who came here, that's what drew them.

  Rush Limbaugh

  America, Government, People

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• The original United States, the founding of America was indeed a shared culture. And you could argue that there was a diversity from the founding days, but not the way the left defines diversity today.

  Rush Limbaugh

  America, Diversity, Today

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Diversity means, when the left teaches it, the people responsible for building America and maintaining it get the short end of the stick from now on. With this singular American culture that people came and wanted to be part of, they were proud, couldn't wait to become Americans, tears in their eyes when it happened. It was a special place. Defending it now, defending that America, defending our cultural, defending our founding, defending all of the things that made this country great is now called racism or xenophobia or hate.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Country, Xenophobia, Hate

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.

  Jon Stewart

  Father, Believe, July

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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.

  Barack Obama

  Meaningful, Country, Believe

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.2, Canongate Books

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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.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Believe, Ignorance

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.193, Cambridge University Press

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• If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

  Stephen Colbert

  Father, 4th Of July, Political

  "Stephen Colbert must be stopped!". edition.cnn.com. February 22, 2012.

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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.

  John Adams

  4th Of July, Patriotic, Illumination

  John Adams (2004). “The Portable John Adams”, p.214, Penguin

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• I usually don't have a burger, a brat, and a steak but it is 4th of July.  And I need the energy if I'm gonna start blowin crap up.  It's what the founding fathers would want.

  Jim Gaffigan

  Father, 4th Of July, Energy

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