Ben Franklin Quotes
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Ben Franklin
”Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.”
”He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security.”
”He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.”
”People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.”
”If we restrict liberty to attain security we will lose them both.”
”Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
”He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.”
”Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither.”
”Those who give up their liberty for more security neither deserve liberty nor security.”
Ben Franklin
“A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.”
Ben Franklin
”A good conscience is a continual Christmas.”
Ben Franklin
”A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.”
Ben Franklin
”A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.”
Ben Franklin
”A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.”
Ben Franklin
”A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things. There will be sleeping enough in the grave.”
Ben Franklin
”A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.”
Ben Franklin
”A penny saved is a penny earned.”
Ben Franklin
”A place for everything, everything in its place.”
Ben Franklin
” Beware of little expenses. A small leak can sink a great ship.”
Ben Franklin
”Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.”
Ben Franklin
”Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.”
Ben Franklin
”All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.”
Ben Franklin
”All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.”
Ben Franklin
”All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.”
Ben Franklin
”An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Ben Franklin
”And whether you're an honest man, or whether you're a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.”
Ben Franklin
”Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.”
Ben Franklin
”Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.”
Ben Franklin
”Applause waits on success.”
Ben Franklin
“As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.”
Ben Franklin
”At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.”
Ben Franklin
”Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every New Year find you a better man.”
Ben Franklin
”Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.”
Ben Franklin
”Beauty and folly are old companions.”
Ben Franklin
”Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
Ben Franklin
”Beware the hobby that eats.”
Ben Franklin
”By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Ben Franklin
”Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
Ben Franklin
”Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.”
Ben Franklin
”Creditors have better memories than debtors.”
Ben Franklin
”Diligence is the mother of good luck.”
Ben Franklin
”Distrust and caution are the parents of security.”
Ben Franklin
”Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.”
Ben Franklin
”Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.”
Ben Franklin
”Do not squander time for that is the stuff life is made of.”
Ben Franklin
”Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.”
Ben Franklin
“Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.”
Ben Franklin
”Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
Ben Franklin
”Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.”
Ben Franklin
”Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
Ben Franklin
”Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.”
Ben Franklin
”Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.”
Ben Franklin
”Fatigue is the best pillow.”
Ben Franklin
”For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.”
Ben Franklin
”Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.”
Ben Franklin
”Games lubricate the body and the mind.”
Ben Franklin
”Genius without education is like silver in the mine.”
Ben Franklin
”God helps those who help themselves.”
Ben Franklin
”God works wonders now and then; Behold a lawyer, an honest man.”
Ben Franklin
”Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”
Ben Franklin
”Half a truth is often a great lie.”
Ben Franklin
”Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.”
Ben Franklin
”He does not possess wealth; it possesses him.”
Ben Franklin
”He that can have patience can have what he will.”
Ben Franklin
”He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.”
Ben Franklin
George Washington Quotes
“A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”George Washington
“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.”
George Washington
”Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”George Washington
”Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”
George Washington
”I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.”
George Washington
”If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
George Washington
”If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.”
George Washington
”It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”
George Washington
”It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.”
George Washington
“It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.”
George Washington
”It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.”
George Washington
”Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.”
George Washington
”Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”
George Washington
”The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.”
George Washington
”The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.”
George Washington
”The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.”
George Washington
James Madison Quotes
“A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.”
James Madison
”Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”
James Madison
”The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.”
James Madison
”The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”
James Madison
”The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.”
James Madison
”The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.”
James Madison
”It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”
James Madison
”A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”
James Madison
”A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.”
James Madison
”A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.”
James Madison
”A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.”
James Madison
”Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
James Madison
”A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.” James Madison
”All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.”
James Madison
”Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
James Madison
”America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.”
James Madison
”And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
James Madison
”As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”
James Madison
”As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.”
James Madison
”By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.”
James Madison
”Commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive, and impolitic.”
James Madison
”Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.”
James Madison
”Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”
James Madison
”Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.”
James Madison
“Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.”
James Madison
”I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
James Madison
”I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.”
James Madison
”If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
James Madison
”If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
James Madison
”If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.”
James Madison
”In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
James Madison
”In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.”
James Madison
”It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”
James Madison
”Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
James Madison
”Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”
James Madison
”Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.”
James Madison
”Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”
James Madison
”No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
James Madison
”Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”
James Madison
”Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”
James Madison
”Philosophy is common sense with big words.”
James Madison
“Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.”
James Madison
”The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
James Madison
”The circulation of confidence is better than the circulation of money.”
James Madison
”The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.”
James Madison
”The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
James Madison
”The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”
James Madison
”The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”
James Madison
”The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.”
James Madison
”The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.”
James Madison
”The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.”
James Madison
”The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”
James Madison
”The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.”
James Madison
”The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.”
James Madison
“There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.”
James Madison
”To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”
James Madison
”War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.”
James Madison
”War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.”
James Madison
”We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”
James Madison
”What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
James Madison
”What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?”
James Madison
”Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.”
James Madison
”Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.” James Madison
John Adams Quotes
“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”
John Adams
“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.”
John Adams
“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
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”
John Adams
“In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.” JohnAdams
“No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.” John Adams
“The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.”John Adams
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”John Adams
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the staten of facts and evidence.” John Adams
“You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”John Adams
“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”John Adams
“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.” JohnAdams
John Hancock Quotes
"There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!" John Hancock
"There, I guess King George will be able to read that."John Hancock
"A chip on the shoulder is too heavy a piece of baggage to carry through life."John Hancock
"In circumstances as dark as these, it becomes us, as Men and Christians, to reflect that whilst every prudent measure should be taken to ward off the impending judgments, …at the same time all confidence must be withheld from the means we use; and reposed only on that God rules in the armies of Heaven, and without His whole blessing, the best human counsels are but foolishness."John Hancock
Samuel Adams Quotes
“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”
Samuel Adams
”He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.”
Samuel Adams
”How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!”
Samuel Adams
”It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.”
Samuel Adams
”It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
Samuel Adams
”Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.”
Samuel Adams
”Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”
Samuel Adams
”The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
Samuel Adams
”The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.”
Samuel Adams
”The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.”
Samuel Adams
”We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them.”
Samuel Adams
“All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.”
Samuel Adams
Thomas Jefferson Quotes
Thomas Jefferson
“In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
“It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.”Thomas Jefferson
“Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Never spend your money before you have it.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself.”Thomas Jefferson
“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”
Thomas Jefferson
“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.”
Thomas Jefferson
“The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.”
Thomas Jefferson
“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.
Thomas Jefferson
“I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.”
Thomas Jefferson
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
Thomas Jefferson
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
Thomas Jefferson
“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.”
Thomas Jefferson
”Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.”
Thomas Jefferson
“Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.” Thomas Jefferson
“How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.”Thomas Jefferson
“When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.” Thomas Jefferson