Other Quotes
U.S. Constitution
"[The Constitution is] the most wonderful work ever
struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of
man." (Gladstone)
"The American system was devised by the ablest group of
men who ever appeared at the same time in the same country
throughout the history of the world." (Everett P. Wilson)
"The Constitution of 1789 deserves the veneration with
which the Americans ... regard it.... After all deductions, it
ranks above every other written constitution for the intrinsic
excellence of its scheme, its adaptation to the circumstances of
the people, the simplicity, brevity, and precision of its
language, its judicious mixture of definiteness in principle
with elasticity in details." (Lord Bryce)
"The American Constitution is remarkable for its
simplicity, but it can only suffice a people habitually correct
in their actions and would be utterly inadequate to the wants of
a different nation. Change the domestic habits of Americans,
their religious devotion and their high respect for morality,
and it will not be necessary to change a single letter in the
Constitution in order to vary the whole form of
government." (Francis Grund, historian)
"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the
determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single
citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are the
constitutional rights secure." (Albert Einstein)
"What is the Militia? It is the whole people, except for
a few public officials." (George Mason)
Freedom
"To be born free is a privilege. To die free is an
awesome responsibility." (Unknown)
"The greatest glory of a freeborn people is to transmit
that freedom to their children." (William Harvard, author)
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole
body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike,
especially when young, how to use them." (Richard Henry
Lee)
"The iron gate of our prison stands half open, one
gallant rush.....will fling it wide." (Frederick Dougless)
"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome
restraint." (Daniel Webster, 1847)
The New Colossus - By liberty Lazarus: "Not like the
brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from
land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A
mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned
lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged
harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep the ancient lands,
your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give
me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to
breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send
these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden
door." (The inscription on a tablet within the
Statue of Liberty's pedestal).
Tyranny
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good
men to do nothing." (Edmund Burke, 1729-1797)
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to
repeat it." (George Santayna)
"No great nation has ever been destroyed by a foe from
without which has not already destroyed itself by corruption
within." (Unknown)
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it
dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
(Judge Learned Hand)
"Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good
people are not vigilant." (Archbishop Desmond Tutu)
"The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly
self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are,
therefore, those which blissfully and unawarely enslave
themselves." (Dresden James)
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India,
history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of
arms, as the blackest." (Mahatma Ghandi)
"To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual
way to enslave them..." (George Mason)
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance
of those whom they oppress." (Frederick Douglas, 1857)
Patriotism
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of
America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
(The Pledge of Allegiance)
"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything,
but I can do something. What I can do, I should do and, with the
help of God, I will do!" (Everett Hale)
"Nothing is less worthy of honor than an old man who has
no other evidence of having lived long, except his age."
(Seneca)
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce
man, Brave, Hated, and Scorned. When his cause succeeds however,
the timid join him, For then it costs nothing to be a
Patriot." (Mark Twain)
"No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too
soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and
Constitution of his country." (Daniel Webster)
Government
"We hold these truths self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty,
and Pursuit of Happiness." (Declaration of Independence)
"It is not the function of the government to keep the
citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the
citizen to keep the government from falling into error."
(U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Parker, Chief Prosecutor
for the United States of America at the Nuremberg Trials)
"The only foundation for... a republic is to be laid in
Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without
virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and
life of all republican governments." (Benjamin Rush, signed
the Declaration of Independence)
"A government big enough to give you everything you want
is big enough to take everything you have." (Barry
Goldwater)
"Concentration of power is what always precedes the
destruction of human liberties." (Woodrow Wilson)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the
laws." (Tacitus, Roman historian 55-117 A.D.)
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be
ruled by tyrants." (William Penn)
"Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based
upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is
impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to
this extent our civilization and our institutions are
emphatically Christian...this is a Christian nation." (U.S.
Supreme Court, 1892, Church of the Holy Trinity vs. U.S.)
"Providence has given to our people the choice of their
rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest
of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for
their rulers." (John Jay)
Righteousness
"... And thus be our motto ‘In God We Trust’"
(Francis Scott Key - From our National Anthem and placed on our
currency)
"Not until I went into the churches of America and heard
her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret
of her genius and power. America is great because America is
good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease
to be great." (Alexis de Tocqueville)
"The moral principles and precepts contained in the
Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions
and laws. All the miseries and evil men suffer from vice, crime,
ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from
their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the
Bible." (Noah Webster)
"A sense of right and wrong is necessary for the life of
a community. Without it the society will destroy itself. History
shows that the loosening of moral bonds is the first stage of
disintegration." (Lord Deven, famous British jurist)
"Whatever makes men good Christians makes them good
citizens." (Daniel Webster)
"The United States are under peculiar obligations to
become a holy people unto the Lord our God." (Ezra,
president of Yale, 1783)
"Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of
time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion,
whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the
good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of
morals, the best security for the duration of free
governments." (Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration
of Independence)
"The rights essential to happiness.... We claim them
from a higher source - from the King of kings and Lord of all
the earth." (John Dickinson, signed the Constitution and a
member of the Continental Congress)
"Why may not the Bible and especially the New Testament
be read and taught as a divine revelation in school? Where else
can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or
so perfectly as from the New Testament?" (U.S. Supreme
Court, 1844, Vidal v. Girard's Executors, Justice Story
delivered the Supreme Court's unanimous opinion)
"Let the children ... be carefully instructed in the
principles and obligations of the Christian religion. This is
the most essential part of education. The great enemy of the
salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effectual
means of extirpating [removing] Christianity from the world than
by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at
schools." (Benjamin Rush)
"Good government generally begins in the family, and if
the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political
character must soon follow." (Elias Boudinot, president of
the Continental Congress, later a congressman from NJ, and
president of the American Bible Society)
"It is the sincere desire of the writer that our
citizens should early understand that the genuine source of
correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New
Testament or the Christian religion." (Noah Webster)
"... with the prayer that God will raise up in our day a
new generation of men, women, and young people who will walk
with God -- men and women who are committed, whatever the cost,
to see His righteousness restored in the hearts, homes, and
institutions of our land." (Nancy Leigh DeMoss)
Founding Fathers
"In no other period of history would it be possible to
find in politics five men of such intellectual stature as
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison
and Thomas Jefferson; and there were others only slightly less
distinguished. Only for the brief span of a single lifetime
would America’s statesmen and her brightest thinkers be the
same men." (Edmund Morgan on the Founding Fathers)
(When asked) "How long will the American Republic
endure?" (He replied) "As long as the ideas of the men
who founded it continue dominant." (James Russel Lowell)
