Quotes on Voter Responsibility
“God commands you to choose for rulers, ‘just men who will rule in the fear of God.’”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual-
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“Let the youth of America… instead of indulging a rapturous admiration for the modern superficial speechifyers in favor of an American monarchy, let them examine the principles of the late glorious revolution… and before they embrace the chains of servitude, let them scrutinize… if their pride… will suffer them to lick the hand of a despotic master…
Let him be stigmatized with the odium…the base betrayer of the rights of his country…though he may artfully have obtained an election…
Let the old Patriots come forward, and instead of secretly wrapping up their opinions within their own breasts, let them lift up the voice like a trumpet, and show this people their folly and…impending danger.”
— James Warren (1726–1808) President of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, Paymaster General of the Continental Army
“It is not easy to determine who are the more criminal. They who would make their way to places of power and trust by indirect means, or they who have so little concern for the welfare of their country as to harken to them. No civil rulers are to be obeyed when they enjoin things that are inconsistent with the commands of God: All such disobedience is lawful and glorious.”
— Jonathan Mayew (1720-
“The relations which exist between man and his Maker, and the duties resulting from those relations, are the most interesting and important to every human being and the most incumbent on his study and investigation.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man. We must not conclude merely upon a man’s haranguing upon liberty, and using the charming sound, that he is fit to be trusted with the liberties of his country.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws –
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“Finally, ye Freemen, all of every class whose high prerogative it is, to raise up, or pull down, to invest with office and authority, or to withhold them, and in whose power it is to save or destroy your country, consider well the important trust and distinguishing privileges which God and nature have put into your hands. To God and posterity you are accountable for your rights and your rulers. See that you preserve them inviolate and transmit them to posterity unimpaired. Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights, and prostrating those institutions which our fathers delivered to you. …And that this happy state of things may continue, look well to the characters and qualifications of those you elect and raise to office and places of trust. …
Choose ye out from among you able men, such as fear God, men of truth and hating covetousness and set them to rule over you. Think not that your interests will be safe in the hands of the weak and ignorant or faithfully managed by the impious, the dissolute and the immoral. Think not that men who acknowledge not the providence of God nor regard his laws, will be uncorrupt in office, firm in defense of the righteous cause against the oppressor, or resolutely oppose the torrent of iniquity. Their own emolument, ease or pleasure, will at any time induce them to connive at injustice and iniquity, or join with the oppressor. Watch over your liberties and privileges civil and religious with a careful eye. In defense of these be zealous, resolute and intrepid. They demand it of you and are worthy of it, even though your lives were to be sacrificed. …
Banish party factions from among you-
— Reverend Matthias Burnet (1749-
“Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity’s liberty!”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“Let me …warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party …[it’s] common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. …It agitates the community with ill-
— George Washington (1732-
“When a citizen gives his suffrage [vote] to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor, he betrays the interest of his country.”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds…[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations binds, can have any real good will towards men? Can he be a patriot who, by an openly vicious conduct, is undermining the very bonds of society? … The Scriptures tell us ‘righteousness exalteth a nation.’”
— Abigail Adams (1744-
“CORRUPT LEGISLATION LEADS TO ANARCHY”
“When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of [our] republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this Duty; if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“The executive, in our government is not the sole, it is scarcely the principle, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislature is the most formidable dread at present and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S
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“In every condition of life, and in forming your opinions on every subject, let it be an established principle in regulating your conduct, that nothing can be honorable, which is morally wrong. Men who disregard or disbelieve revelation, often err from the true standard of honor, by substituting public opinion, or false maxims, for the divine laws. The character of God, his holy attributes, and perfect law, constitute the only models and rules of excellence and true honor. Whatever deviates from these models and rules, must be wrong and dishonorable. Crime and vice are therefore not only repugnant to duty, and to human happiness, but are always derogatory to reputation. All vice implies defect and meanness in human character.”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” (and today we need more masters)
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“A good moral character is the first essential in a man …”
— George Washington (1732-
“If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there is not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical (imaginary; fanciful or vainly conceived) idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“But still the people themselves must be the chief support of liberty. While the great body of the freeholders (voters) are acquainted with the duties which they owe to their God, to themselves, and to men, remain free. But if ignorance and depravity should prevail, they will inevitably lead to slavery and ruin.”
— Samuel Huntington (1731-
“The freedom and happiness of man…[are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U
“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”
— James Madison (1751-
“A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired. This maxim, drawn from the experience of all ages, makes it the height of folly to intrust any set of men with power, which is not under every possible control.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate—look to his character as a man of known principle, of tried integrity, and undoubted ability for the office.
It is alledged by men of loose principles, or defective views on the subject, that religion and morality are not necessary or important qualifications for political stations. But the Scriptures teach a different doctrine. They direct that rulers should be men who rule in the fear of God, able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness. But if we had no divine instruction on the subject, our own interest would demand of us a strict observance of the principle of these injunctions. And it is to the neglect of this rule of conduct in our citizens, that we must ascribe the multiplied frauds, breaches of trust, peculations and embezzlements of public property which astonish even ourselves; which tarnish the character of our country; which disgrace a republican government; and which will tend to reconcile men to monarchy in other countries and even in our own.
When a citizen gives his suffrage [vote] to a man of known immorality, he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country. Nor is it of slight importance, that men elected to office should be able men, men of talents equal to their stations, men of mature age, experience, and judgment; men of firmness and impartiality. This is particularly true with regard to men who constitute tribunals of justice—the main bulwark of our rights—the citadel that maintains the last struggle of freedom against the inroads of corruption and tyranny. In this citadel should be stationed no raw, inexperienced soldier, no weak temporizing defender, who will obsequiously bend to power, or parley with corruption.
One of the surest tests of a man’s real worth, is the esteem and confidence of those who have long known him, and his conduct in domestic and social life. It may be held as generally true, that respect spontaneously attaches itself to real worth; and the man of respectable virtues, never has occasion to run after respect. Whenever a man is known to seek promotion by intrigue, by temporizing, or by resorting to the haunts of vulgarity and vice for support, it may be inferred, with moral certainty, that he is not a man of real respectability, nor is he entitled to public confidence. As a general rule, it may be affirmed, that the man who never intrigues for office, may be most safely intrusted with office; for the same noble qualities, his pride, or his integrity and sense of dignity, which make him disdain the mean arts of flattery and intrigue, will restrain him from debasing himself by betraying his trust. Such a man can not desire promotion, unless he receives it from the respectable part of the community; for he considers no other promotion to be honorable.”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“The people can never willfully betray their own interests: But they may possibly be betrayed by the representatives of the people; and the danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men, than where the concurrence of separate and dissimilar bodies is required in every public act.”
— James Madison (1751-
“How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-
— James Madison (1751-
“The Americans are the first people whom heaven has favored with an opportunity of deliberating upon, and choosing the forms of government under which they should live; —all other constitutions have derived their existence from violence or accidental circumstances, …Your life, your liberties, your property, will be at the disposal of your Creator and yourselves. You will know no power but such as you will create; no authority unless derived from your grant; no laws, but such as acquired all their obligations from your consent. …Adequate security is also given to the rights of conscience and private judgment. They are, by nature, subject to no control but that of the Deity and in that free situation they are now left. Every man is permitted to consider, to adore and to worship his creator in the manner most agreeable to his conscience. No opinions are dictated; no rules of faith prescribed; no preference given to one sect [of Christianity over] to the prejudice of others.
The constitution, however, has wisely declared, that the “liberty of conscience thereby granted shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of the State.” In a word, the convention by whom that constitution was formed were of opinion that the gospel of Christ, like the ark of God, would not fall, though unsupported by the arm of flesh; and happy would it be for mankind if that opinion prevailed more generally. …from the people it must receive its spirit, and by them be quickened, Let virtue, honor, the love of liberty and of science be, and remain, the soul of this constitution, and it will become the source of great and extensive happiness to this and future generations. Vice, ignorance, and want of vigilance, will be the only enemies able to destroy it. Against these provide, and, of these, be forever jealous. Every member of the state, ought diligently to read and study the constitution of his country, and teach the rising generation to be free. By knowing their rights [God given], they [you the voter] will sooner perceive when they are violated, and be the better prepared to defend and assert them.”
— John Jay (1745-
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it, may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Make yourself sheep, and the wolves will eat you.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.”
— George Mason George Mason (1725-
“Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state.”
— George Mason George Mason (1725-
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“There must be religion. When that ligament is torn, society is disjointed and its members perish. The nation is exposed to foreign violence and domestic convulsion. Vicious rulers, chosen by vicious people, turn back the current of corruption to its source. Placed in a situation where they can exercise authority for their own emolument, they betray their trust. They take bribes. They sell statutes and decrees. They sell honor and office. They sell their conscience. They sell their country. . . . But the most important of all lessons is, the denunciation of ruin to every state that rejects the precepts of religion. Those nations are doomed to death who bury, in the corruption of criminal desire, the awful sense of an existing God, cast off the consoling hope of immortality, and seek refuge from despair in the dreariness of annihilation. Terrible, irrevocable doom! loudly pronounced, frequently repeated, strongly exemplified in the sacred writings, and fully confirmed by the long record of time. It is the clue which leads through the intricacies of universal history. It is the principle of all sound political science.”
— Gouverneur Morris (1752-
“The true, and only true, basis of representative government is equality of rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and no more, in the choice of representatives. The rich have no more right to exclude the poor from the right of voting, or of electing or being elected, than the poor have to exclude the rich; and wherever it is attempted or proposed on either side, it is a question of force, and not of right. Who is he that would exclude another?—that other has a right to exclude him. Those who oppose an equality of rights, never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves. The right of voting for representatives, is the primary right by which other rights are protected.
To take away this right, is to reduce a man to a state of slavery—for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another; and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives, is in this case. The proposal, therefore, to disfranchise any class of men, is as criminal as the proposal to take away property.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”
— Patrick Henry (1736-
“National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman, and that there is an obligation to perform such a duty absolutely irrespective of party politics or factional differences.”
— John Adams (1797-
“We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.”
— John Adams (1797-
“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”
— James Madison (1751-
“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them ; and as Governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good [virtue & fear of God] and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.”
— William Penn (1644-
“Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of inlldcls or idolaters should be a nation of freemen. It is when a people forget God, that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
I know some say, let us have good laws, and no matter for the men that execute them: but let them consider, that though good laws do well, good men do better: for good laws may want good men, and be abolished or evaded [invaded in Franklin’s print] by ill men; but good men will never want good laws, nor suffer ill ones.
It is true, good laws have some awe upon ill ministers, but that is where they have not power to escape or abolish them, and the people are generally wise and good: but a loose and depraved people (which is the question) love laws and an administration like themselves. That, therefore, which makes a good constitution, must keep it, viz: men of wisdom and virtue, qualities, that because they descend not with worldly inheritances, must be carefully propagated by a virtuous education of youth; for which after ages will owe more to the care and prudence of founders, and the successive magistracy, than to their parents, for their private patrimonies.””
— Patrick Henry (1736-
“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 (1797-
“There are virtues & vices which are properly called political. ‘Corruption, dishonesty to ones country luxury and extravagance tend to the ruin of states.’ The opposite virtues tend to their establishment. But ‘there is a connection between vices as well as virtues and one opens the door for the entrance of another.’ Therefore ‘wise and able politicians will guard against other vices,’ and be attentive to promote every virtue. 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. …There are other things which I humbly conceive require and therefore I trust will have the most serious consideration of the government. We have heretofore complained, and I think justly, that bad men have too often found their way into places of public trust. Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a state than that all persons employed in places of power and trust be Men of unexceptionable characters. The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom. Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-
— James Madison (1751-
“Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue; and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange tyrants and tyrannies.”
— John Adams (1797-
“We should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, the Government may not be the choice of the American people, but of foreign nations.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Let the American youth never forget that they possess a noble inheritance, bought by the toils and sufferings and blood of their ancestors, and capable, if wisely improved and faithfully guarded, of transmitting to the latest posterity all the substantial blessings of life, the peaceful enjoyment of liberty, property, religion, and independence. The structure has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid, its compartments are beautiful as well as useful, its arrangements are full of wisdom and order, and its defenses are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of men may justly aspire to such a title. It may nevertheless perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, the People. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded because they flatter the people in order to betray them.”
— Joseph Story (1779-
“There must be religion. When that ligament is torn, society is disjointed and its members perish. The nation is exposed to foreign violence and domestic convulsion. Vicious rulers, chosen by vicious people, turn back the current of corruption to its source. Placed in a situation where they can exercise authority for their own emolument, they betray their trust. They take bribes. They sell statutes and decrees. They sell honor and office. They sell their conscience. They sell their country. . . . But the most important of all lessons is the denunciation of ruin to every state that rejects the precepts of religion.”
— Gouverneur Morris (1752-
“It has been observed, that ‘a violation of manners had destroyed more states than the infraction of laws.’ It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government.”
— Mercy Otis Warren (1728-
“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
— John Quincy Adams, (1767-
“History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy. … These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened.””
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few not for the many.”
— Federalist No. 62
“It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please. Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like a fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
— George Washington (1732-
“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first, to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and, in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous, whilst they continue to hold their public trust. The elective mode of obtaining rulers, is the characteristic policy of republican government. The means relied on in this form of government for preventing their degeneracy, are numerous and various. The most effectual one, is such a limitation of the term of appointments, as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachments is to, grow every day more encroaching; like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in cof justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
— George Washington (1732-
“Nothing can be more unfair and impolitic than to substitute for argument an indiscriminate and uubounded jealousy with which all reasoning must be vain. The sincere friends of liberty, who give themselves up to the extravagances of this passion, inflict the most serious injury upon their own cause. As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. A republican government presupposes and requires the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form; and wholly to destroy our reliance on them is to sap all the foundation on which our liberties must rest.”
— James Madison (1751-
“The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.”
— John Adams (1797-
“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary. It follows the substance like its shade; but while a man walks erect, he may observe that his shadow is almost always in the dirt. It corrupts, it deceives, it inflames. It strips virtue of her honors, and lends to faction its wildfire and its poisoned arms, and in the end is its own enemy and the usurper’s ally, It would be easy to enlarge on its evils.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“We have reason to rejoice in the prospect that the national government, which, by the favor of Divine Providence was formed by the common councils, and peaceably established with the common consent of the people, will prove a blessing to every denomination of them; to render it such my best endeavors shall not be wanting. Government being among other purposes instituted to protect the persons and consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of the rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to their stations to prevent it in others. The liberty enjoyed by the people of these States, of worshipping Almighty God agreeably to their consciences, is not only among the choicest blessings, but also of their rights.”
— George Washington (1732-
“Acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter: with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. It is a suitable pledge of his fidelity and responsibility to his country; and creates upon his conscience a deep sense of duty, by an appeal, at once in the presence of God and man, to the most sacred and solemn sanctions which can operate upon the human mind.”
— Joseph Story (1779-
“It is in the interest of tyrants to reduce the people to ignorance and vice. For they cannot live in any country where virtue and knowledge prevail. The religion and public liberty of a people are intimately connected; their interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin’d to destroy the people’s liberties, practice every art to poison their morals.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.”
— James Madison (1751-
“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“A large portion of our citizens, who will not believe, even on the evidence of facts, that any public evils exist, or are impending. They deride the apprehensions of those who foresee, that licentiousness will prove, as it ever has proved, fatal to liberty.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“All men having power ought to be mistrusted.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“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; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be to-
— Federalist No. 62
“We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good.”
— John Adams (1797-
“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; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be to-
— Federalist No. 62
“We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerates, their political character must soon follow. A friendly consideration of our fellow-
The most enlightened and zealous of our public servants can do little without the exertions of private citizens to perfect what they do but form as it were in embryo. The highest officers of our government are but the first servants of the people and always in their power: they have, therefore, a just claim to a fair and candid experiment of the plans they form and the laws they enact for the public weal. Too much should not be expected from them; they are but men and of like passions and of like infirmities with ourselves; they are liable to err, though exercising the purest motives and best abilities required for the purpose.
Times and circumstances may change and accidents intervene to disappoint the wisest measures. Mistaken and wicked men (who cannot live but in troubled waters) are often laboring with indefatigable zeal, which sometimes proves but too successful, to sour our minds and derange the best-
These considerations should lead to an attentive solicitude to keep the pure, unadulterated principles of our constitution always in view; to be religiously careful in our choice of public officers; and as they are again in oar power at very. short periods lend not too easily a patient ear to every invidious insinuation or improbable story, but prudently mark the effects of their public measures and judge of the tree by its fruits.”
— Elias Boudinot (1740–1821) Founding Father, statesman and patriot
“Be not intimidated … nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.”
— John Adams (1797-
“If the public are bound to yield obedience to laws to which they cannot give their approbation, they are slaves to those who make such laws and enforce them.”
— Samuel Adams (“Candidus”) (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.”
— George Washington (1732-
“Be companions of them that fear God. Esteem them always most highly, and shun, as a contagious pestilence, the society not only of loose persons, but of those especially whom you perceive to be infected with the principles of infidelity, or enemies to the power of religion. …But be especially careful to avoid those who are enemies to vital piety, who do not pretend to speak directly against religion, but give every vile name they can think of to all who seem to be in earnest on that subject, and vilify the exercises of religion, under the names of whining, cant, grimace, and hypocrify. These are often unhappily successful in making some incautious persons ashamed of their Redeemer’s name, his truths, his laws, his people, and his cross.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“It gives me real concern to observe … that you should think it necessary to distinguish between my personal and public character, and confine your esteem to the former.“
— George Washington (1732-
“It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves. You have the highest of human trusts committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you, as the guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May He, who holds in his hands the destinies of nations, make you worthy of the favors he has bestowed, and enable you, with pure hearts, and pure hands, and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time the great charge he has committed to your keeping.
“Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-
“As you sometimes swear by him that made you, I conclude your sentiments do not correspond with his, in that which is the basis of the doctrine you both agree in: and this makes it impossible to imagine whence this congruity between you arises. “To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable.
Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature….Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind. …
The Supreme Being gave existence to man …; and invested him with an inviolable right to personal liberty and personal safety … Hence, also, the origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact between the rulers and the ruled; and must be liable to-
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any.”
— James Madison (1751-
“History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“I firmly believe this … that without His [God’s] concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate, and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only false depositories. And to render even them false, their minds must be improved to a certain degree. This indeed is not all that is necessary, though it be essentially necessary.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“It is a great mistake to suppose that the paper [Constitution] we are to propose will govern the United States. It is the men whom it will bring into the government, and interest in maintaining it, that are to govern them. The paper will only mark out the mode and the form.”
— John Francis Mercer (1759–1821) Patriot, Maryland delegate to the Constructional Convention (opposed a strong centralized government, walked out before the convention had ended)
“It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“My own race is nearly run; advanced age and failing health warn me that before long I must pass beyond the reach of human events, and cease to feel the vicissitudes of human affairs. I thank God that my life has been spent in a land of liberty, and that he has given me a heart to love my country with the affection of a son. And filled with gratitude for your constant and unwavering kindness, I bid you a last and affectionate farewell.”
— Andrew Jackson (1767-
“The danger to all well-
The tendencies of all such governments in their decline is to monarchy, and the antagonist principle to liberty there is the spirit of faction—a spirit which assumes the character and in times of great excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of freedom, and, like the false Christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior, seeks to, and were it possible would, impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty. It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have intrusted power.”
— William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) The Ninth President of the United States
“I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. … Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government—from their carelessness and negligence—I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct.—that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant—give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.”
— Daniel Webster (1782-
“Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“The people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature . … If the next centennial does not find us a great nation… it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”
— James Garfield (1831-
“You [the voter] have especially to guard yourselves. You have the highest of human trust committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number and has chosen you as the guardian of freedom to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May He who holds in his hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed and enable you, with pure hearts and pure hands and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to to the end of time the great charge he has committed to your keeping.”
— Andrew Jackson (1767-
“Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits. Living under the heavenly light of revelation, they hoped to find all the social dispositions, all the duties which men owe to each other and to society, enforced and performed. Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their religion free and unmolested; and, at the end of two centuries, there is nothing upon which we can pronounce more confidently, nothing of which we can express a more deep and earnest conviction, than of the inestimable importance of that religion to man, both in regard to this life and that which is to come.
If the blessings of our political and social condition have not been too highly estimated, we cannot well overrate the responsibility and duty which they impose upon us. We hold these institutions of government, religion, and learning, to be transmitted, as well as enjoyed. We are in the line of conveyance, through which whatever has been obtained by the spirit and efforts of our ancestors is to be communicated to our children.
We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example of our own systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be significant, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion.“
— Daniel Webster (1782-
“But the time has come that Christians [& citizens] must vote for honest men, and take consistent ground in politics. They must let the world see that the Church will uphold no man in office who is known to be a knave, or an adulterer, or a Sabbath-
“God cannot sustain this free and blessed country, which we love and pray for, unless the Church will take right ground. Politics are a part of a religion in such a country as this, and Christians [& citizens] must do their duty to the country as a part of their duty to God. It seems sometimes as if the foundations of the nation are becoming rotten, and Christians seem to act as if they think God does not see what they do in politics. But I tell you He does see it, and He will bless or curse this nation, according to the course they take.”
— Reverend Charles G. Finney (1792-
“No man can well doubt the propriety of placing a president of the United States under the most solemn obligations to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution.”
— Joseph Story (1779-
“History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“Whatever government is not a government of laws, is a despotism, let it be called what it may.”
— Daniel Webster (1782-
“Every voter ought not merely to vote, but to vote under the inspiration of a high purpose to serve the nation. It has been calculated that in most elections only about half of them entitled to vote actually exercise their franchise. What is worse, a considerable part of those who neglect to vote do it because of a curious assumption of superiority to this elementary duty of the citizen. They presume to be rather too good, too exclusive, to soil their hands with the work of politics… Popular government is facing one of the difficult phases of the perpetual trial to which it always has been and always will be subjected. It needs the support of every element of patriotism, intelligence and capacity that can be summoned.”
— Calvin Coolidge (1872-
“We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity.”
— Theodore Roosevelt (1901-
“A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
— Theodore Roosevelt (1901-
“The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
— Proverbs 1:7 RSV
“The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds, there is none that does good. The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one. Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the LORD? There they shall be in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous.”
— Psalms 14:1-
“Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“Those who wish well to the State ought to choose to places of trust men of inward principle, justified by exemplary conversation. Is it reasonable to expect wisdom from the ignorant? fidelity from the profligate? assiduity and application to public business from men of a dissipated life? Is it reasonable to commit the management of public revenue to one who hath wasted his own patrimony? Those, therefore, who pay no regard to religion and sobriety in the persons whom they send to the legislature of any State are guilty of the greatest absurdity and will soon pay dear for their folly. Let a man’s zeal, profession, or even principles, as to political measures, be what they will, if he is without personal integrity and private virtue as a man, he is not to be trusted.
Reverence for the name of God, a punctual attendance on the public and private duties of religion, as well as sobriety and purity of conversation, are especially incumbent on those who are honored with places of power and trust. … Let us cherish a love of piety, order, industry, purity. Let us check every disposition to luxury, effeminacy, and the pleasures of a dissipated life. Let us in public measures put honor upon modesty and self-
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. … moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.”
— George Washington (1732-
“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. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this; you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”
— James Madison (1751-
“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Thank God! we are in the full enjoyment of all these privileges. But can we be taught to prize them too much? or how can we prize them equal to their value, if we do not know their intrinsic worth, and that they are not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature?
Since they are our right, let us be vigilant to preserve them uninfringed, and free from encroachments. If animosities arise, and we should be obliged to resort to party, let each of us range himself on the side which unfurls the ensigns of public good. Faction will then vanish, which, if not timely suppressed, may overturn the balance, the palladium of liberty, and crush us under its ruins.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“Though, when a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes.”
— George Washington (1732-
“In times of difficulty and trial it is in the man of piety and inward principle, that we may expect to find the uncorrupted patriot, the useful citizen, and the invincible soldier.God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one, may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this House, and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust. The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government. The means relied on in this form of government for preventing their degeneracy are numerous and various. The most effectual one, is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people.”
— James Madison (1751-
“The true principle of government is this –
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Men will either be governed by God or ruled by tyrants.”
— William Penn (1644-
“We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature . . . the power I mean of electing at stated periods [each] branch. . . . It becomes necessary to every [citizen] then, to be in some degree a statesman, and to examine and judge for himself of the tendency of political principles and measures. Let us examine, then, with a sober, a manly . . . and a Christian spirit; let us neglect all party [loyalty] and advert to facts; let us believe no man to be infallible or impeccable in government any more than in religion; take no man’s word against evidence, nor implicitly adopt the sentiments of others who may be deceived themselves, or may be interested in deceiving us.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“… that the foundation of our national policy should be laid in private morality. If individuals be not influenced by moral principles, it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity, of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-
“A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“Those who are vested with civil authority ought also with much care to promote religion and good morals among all under their government. If we give credit to the Holy Scriptures, he that ruleth must be just, ruling in the fear of God. Those who wish well to the State ought to choose to places of trust men of inward principle, justified by exemplary conversation. Those who pay no regard to religion and sobriety, in the persons whom they send to the legislature of any state, will soon pay dearly for their folly. … the people in general ought to have regard to the moral character of those whom they invest with authority, either in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“Those who are vested, with civil authority ought also with much care to promote religion and good morals among all under their government. If we give-
Let a man’s zeal, profession, or even principles, as to political measures, be what they will, if he is without personal integrity and private virtue as a man, he is not to be trusted. I think we have had some instances of men who have roared for liberty in taverns, and were most noisy in public meetings, who yet have turned traitors in a little while. If the people in general ought to have regard to the moral character of those whom they invest with authority, either in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches, such as are so promoted may perceive what is and will be expected of them. They are under the strongest obligations to promote religion, sobriety, industry, and even social virtue, among those who are committed to their care.
If you ask me what are the means which civil rulers are-
Reverence for the name of God, a punctual attendance on the public and private duties of religion, as well as sobriety and purity of conversation, are especially incumbent on those who are honored with places of power and trust. But I cannot content myself with this. It is certainly the duty of magistrates to be a terror to evil-
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
— George Washington (1732-
“Preserve your government with the utmost attention and solicitude, for it is the remarkable gift of heaven. From year to year be careful in the choice of your representatives, and all the higher powers of government. Fix your eyes upon men of good understanding, and known honesty; men of knowledge, improved by experience; men who fear God, and hate covetousness; who love truth and righteousness, and sincerely wish the public welfare. Beware of such as are cunning rather than wise; who prefer their own interest to every thing; whose judgment is partial, or fickle; and whom you would not willingly trust with your own private interests. When meetings are called for the choice of your rulers, do not carelessly neglect them, or give your votes with indifference, just as any party may persuade, or a sordid treat tempt you; but act with serious deliberation and judgment, as in a most important matter, and let the faithful of the land serve you.
Let not men openly irreligious and immoral become your legislators; for how can you expect good laws to be made by men who have no fear of God before their eyes, and who boldly trample on the authority of his commands? And will not the example of their impiety and immorality defeat the efficacy of the best laws which can be made in favour of religion and virtue? If the legislative body are corrupt, you will soon have bad men for counsellors, corrupt judges, unqualified justices, and officers in every department who will dishonor their stations; the consequence of which will be murmurs and complaints from every quarter. Let a superior character point out the man who is to be your head; for much depends on his inspection and care of public affairs and the influence of his judgment, advice and conduct, although his power is circumscribed: in this choice therefore be always on your guard against parties, and the methods taken to make interest for unworthy men, and let distinguished merit always determine your vote. And when all places in government are filled with the best men you can find, behave yourselves as good subjects; obey the laws; cheerfully submit to such taxation as the necessities of the public call for; give tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, and honor to whom honor, as the gospel commands you.
Never give countenance to turbulent men, who wish to distinguish themselves, and rise to power, by forming combinations and exciting insurrections against government: for this can never be the right way to redress real grievances, since you may not only prefer complaints and petitions to the court, but have the very authority, which you think has been misused, in your own power, and may very shortly place it in other hands.”
— Samuel Langdon (1723-
“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“I conjure you, by all that is dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that ye pray, but that ye act [be involved in the civil arena]; that, if necessary, ye fight, and even die, for the prosperity of our Jerusalem [country]. … But I thank God that America abounds in men who are superior to all temptation, whom nothing can divert from a steady pursuit of the interest of their country. … A numerous host of fellow-
— John Hancock, (1737-
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-
“There is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust.”
— James Madison (1751-
“He is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who set himself with the greatest firmness to bear down on profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-
“The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“Wisdom and knowledge as well as virtue diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education, in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislatures and magistrates…to cherish the interests of literature, and the sciences, and all seminaries of learning. … You have put upon us by your legislation an immense mass of ignorant voters. They have not wisdom, they have not knowledge, some of them even have no virtue, as is the case in every community. These are not diffused among them; from the very nature of the case it cannot be; and yet how anxiously you guard their rights to go to the polls to make laws for us and to regulate our affairs. You have, it may be wisely or unwisely, excluded them from the polls in your States. They must have something of this wisdom, something of this knowledge, something of this virtue there, before you permit them to go to your polls.”
— John Adams (1797-
“A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.”
— James Madison (1751-
“If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“The structure [Constitution] has been erected by architects of consummate skill and fidelity; its foundations are solid, its compartments are beautiful as well as useful, its arrangements are full of wisdom and order, and its defences are impregnable from without. It has been reared for immortality, if the work of men may justly aspire to such a title. It may nevertheless perish in an hour by the folly, or corruption, or negligence of its only keepers, the People. Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall when the wise are banished from the public councils because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded because they flatter the people in order to betray them.”
— Joseph Story (1779-
The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseriesand evil men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression,slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the preceptscontained in the Bible.”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors. Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage, and you are preparing your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of those around you, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.”
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“No compact among men … can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.”
— George Washington (1732-
“Our nation will prosper or decline in direct proportion to our selection of leaders who are guided by the Holy Spirit. If we fail to select Godly leaders our destiny will surely be as that of the Roman Empire.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children: but it is our duty, to leave liberty to them. No infamy, iniquity, or cruelty, can exceed our own, if we, born and educated in a country of freedom, intitled to its blessings, and knowing their value, pusillanimously deserting the post assigned to us by Divine Providence, surrender succeeding generations to a condition of wretchedness, from which no human efforts, in all probability, will be sufficient to extricate them; the experience of all states mournfully demonstrating to us, that when arbitrary power has been established over them, even the wisest and bravest nations, that ever flourished, have, in a few years, degenerated into abject and wretched vassals.”
— John Dickinson (1732–1808) Patriot, Founding Father and lawyer
“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 (1751-
“The infant periods of most nations are buried in silence, or veiled in fable; and perhaps the world may have lost but little which it need regret. The origin and outset of the American Republic contain lessons of which posterity ought not to be deprived; and, happily, there never was a case in which a knowledge of every interesting incident could be so accurately preserved. You have lights, I am persuaded, which ought not to be forever under a bushel.”
— James Madison (1751-
“On the people, therefore, of these United States it depends whether wise men, or fools, good or bad men, shall govern them; whether they shall have righteous laws, a faithful administration of government, and permanent good order, peace, and liberty; or, on the contrary, feel insupportable burdens, and see all their affairs run to confusion and ruin.”
— Samuel Langdon (1723-
“Excessive taxation … will carry reason and reflection to every man’s door, and particularly in the hour of election.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“Equal laws, protecting equal rights, are found, as they ought to be presumed, the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country; as well as best calculated to cherish the mutual respect and good-
— James Madison (1751-
“Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-
— Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941) Former Supreme Court Justice
“We know that ignorance, vanity, excessive ambition and venality, will, in spite of all human precautions, creep into government, and will ever be aspiring at extravagant and unconstitutional emoluments to individuals, let us never relax our attention, or our resolution, to keep these unhappy imperfections in human nature, out of which material, frail as it is, all our rulers must be compounded, under a strict inspection and a just control. We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature, as each branch has upon the other two; the power I mean of electing, at stated periods, one branch, which branch has the power of electing another. It becomes necessary to every subject then, to be in some degree a statesman, and to examine and judge for himself of the tendency of political principles and measures. Let us examine, then, with a sober, a manly… and a Christian spirit.”
— John Adams (1797-
“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”
— John Adams (1797-
“I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-
“What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea-
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic …The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered. It has been said, that the oath of the legislator, and the right of the people to change their rulers by election, form the legitimate securities against the passage of laws not authorized by the constitution. But the oath of the legislator is never introduced, or relied on, as an effectual, independent guard; it is only considered an auxiliary defense against transgression, operating on the mind of a conscientious, or timid man. From the very nature of an oath, while it gives security, with honorable men, against the willful perversion of power, it can give none against.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“… for a true patriot must be a religious man. … He who neglects his duty to his Maker may well be expected to be deficient and insincere in his duty towards the public. Even suppose him to possess a large share of what is called honor and public spirit, yet, do not these men, by their bad example, by a loose, immoral conduct, corrupt the minds of youth, and vitiate the morals of the age, and thus injure the public more than they can compensate by intrepidity, generosity, and honor? Let revenge or ambition, pride, lust, or profit, tempt these men to a base and vile action; you may as well hope to bind up a hungry tiger with a cobweb, as to hold such debauched patriots in the visionary chains of decency, or to charm them with the intellectual beauty of truth and reason.”
— Abigail Adams (1744-
“At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-
“I have been thinking a lot about these things as I have come to the realization of the tremendous responsibilities which rest upon me. It is my conviction that the fundamental trouble with the people of the United States is that they have gotten too far away from Almighty God. I am bound to believe that in a tumultuous age like ours the most important and imperative duty is the reconstruction of humanity to Almighty God.”
— Warren G. Harding (1865-
“A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.”
— Woodrow Wilson (1856-
“The issues which today confront the nation are clearly defined and so fundamental as to directly involve the very survival of the Republic. Are we going to preserve the religious base to our origin, our growth and our progress, or yield to the devious assaults of atheistic or other anti-
Are we going to continue to yield personal liberties and community autonomy to the steady inexplicable centralization all political power or restore the Republic to Constitutional direction, regain our personal liberties and reassume the individual state’s primary responsibility and authority in the conduct of local affairs? Are we going to permit a continuing decline in public and private morality or re-
… In short, is American life of the future to be characterized by freedom or by servitude, strength or weakness? The answer must be clear and unequivocal if we are to avoid the pitfalls toward which we are now heading with such certainty. In many respects it is not to be found in any dogma of political philosophy but in those immutable precepts which underlie the Ten Commandments.”
— Douglas MacArthur (1880-
“I believe this nation hungers for a spiritual revival; hungers to once again see honor placed above political expediency; to see government once again the protector of our liberties, not the distributor of gifts and privilege. Government should uphold and not undermine those institutions which are custodians of the very values upon which civilization is founded—religion, education and, above all, family. Government cannot be clergyman, teacher and patriot. It [government] is our servant, beholden to us.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.” (Over time, countries that produce bad fruit or refuse to serve God’s and obey His commandments are cut down and thrown in the fire)
— John 15:1-
“If we, and our posterity, shall be true to the Christian religion, if we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments, if we, and they, shall maintain just, moral sentiments, and such conscientious convictions of duty as shall control the heart and life, we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country. … It will have no Decline and Full. It will go on prospering and to prosper. But, if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. Should that catastrophe happen, let it have no history. Let the horrible narrative never be written. Let its fate be like that of the lost books of Livy. which no human eye shall ever read, or the missing Pleiad, of which no man can ever know more, than that it is lost, and lost for ever!”
— Daniel Webster (1782-
Letters from “A Farmer”
“A people is traveling fast to destruction, when individuals consider their interests as distinct from those of the public. Such notions are fatal to their country, and to themselves. Yet how many are there, so weak and sordid as to think they perform all the offices of life, if they earnestly endeavour to increase their own wealth, power, and credit, without the least regard for the society, under the protection of which they live; who, if they can make an immediate profit to themselves, by lending their assistance to those, whose projects plainly tend to the injury of their country, rejoice in their dexterity, and believe themselves entitled to the character of able politicians. Miserable men! of whom it is hard to say, whether they ought to be most the objects of pity or contempt: but whose opinions are certainly as detestable, as their practices are destructive….
Let us consider our, selves as men—freemen—Christian freemen—(following the word of God and Republican virtues and principles) separated from the rest of the world, and firmly bound together by the same rights, interests and dangers. … for posterity, to whom, by the most sacred obligations, we are bound to deliver down the invaluable inheritance (of liberty and freedom); …
You may surely, without presumption, believe, that Almighty God himself will look down upon your righteous contest with gracious approbation. You will be a “band of brothers,” cemented by the dearest ties, and strengthened with inconceivable supplies of force and constancy, by that sympathetic ardor, which animates good men [& women], confederated in a good (holy) cause. Your honor and welfare will be, as they now are, most intimately concerned; and besides, you are assigned by divine providence, in the appointed order of things, the protectors of unborn ages, whose fate depends upon your virtue. Whether they shall arise the generous and indisputable heirs of the noblest patrimonies, or the dastardly and hereditary drudges of imperious task-
For my part, I am resolved to contend for the liberty delivered down to me by my ancestors; but whether I shall do it effectually or not, depends on you, my countrymen. How little soever one is able to write, yet when the liberties of one’s country are threatened, it is still more difficult to be silent.”
A Duty to Posterity –
— Letters from “A Farmer”
“Unless virtue guide us our choice must be wrong.”
— William Penn (1644-
Frame of Government of Pennsylvania
“I know some say, let us have good laws, and no matter for the men that execute them: but let them consider, that though good laws do well, good men do better: for good laws may want good men, and be abolished or evaded [invaded in Franklin’s print] by ill mend but good men will never want good laws, nor suffer ill ones. It is true, good laws have some awe upon-
— William Penn (1644-
“We confess, we have been ready to prove the remarkable strength and stability of that constitution, and of course the security of the people, by its having stood so long in spite of the abuses of the press. For where the press is free, it will be abused.
We are, heart and soul, friends to the freedom of the press. It is, however, the prostituted companion of liberty, and somehow or other, we know not how, its efficient auxiliary. It follows the substance like its shade; but while a man walks erect, he may observe that his shadow is almost always in the dirt. It corrupts, it deceives, it inflames. It strips virtue of her honors, and lends to faction its wildfire and its poisoned arms, and in the end is its own enemy and the usurper’s ally. It would be easy to enlarge on its evils. They are in England, they are here, they are everywhere. It is a precious pest and a necessary mischief, and there would be no liberty without it. We expected that the author would have attempted profoundly to trace its useful operation, but he has not done it; and this rare task remains for some more acute inquirer into the obscure causes of its salutary influence.
In the second part, he undertakes to prove that this is the great safeguard of that constitution. For this purpose, he resorts again to history. But in the instances he adduces to show the influence of a free press, he only demonstrates the power of public opinion. The nation would have an opinion, if it had not a press; and that opinion would have weight and authority. Before the art of printing was known, bad ministers were crushed by public odium. The favorites of Edward the Second, of England, were as effectually overpowered by it as if the press had been used. The freedom of the press cannot hinder its being venal. Had it then existed, those odious favorites would have used it to palliate their crimes. They would have bought the press; and no doubt they would have been patriots in type, till they were stripped of the means of corruption; and then again they would have been odious monsters. In our time this boasted luminary vents more smoke than light; so that the circumstances of transactions, and the characters of men, are to be clearly known only by waiting for the evidence of history in a future age, when it will be of very little comparative importance whether the subject be understood or mistaken.
Though nobody will deny the influence of public opinion upon government, … that the press makes every thing more apparent than the truth; and by eternally pretending to judge, the public opinion is without authority or influence; it is counterfeited by fools, and perverted by knaves. But a plain people without a press, would know oppression when they felt it; and there is no government, which is not supported by military force, that would disregard the complaints of an indignant nation. By the help of the press we see invisible things; we foresee evils in their embryo, and accumulate on the present moment all that is bitter in the past or terrible in the future. A whole people are made sick with the diseases of the imagination. They see a monarch in Washington, and conspirators in their patriots. They turn their best men out of office on the strength of their suspicions; and trust their worst men in spite of their knowledge of them. It is the press that has spoiled the temper of our liberty, and may shorten its life.
Still, we repeat, we would by no means wish to see the liberty of the press abridged.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-
“Wheras the glory of almighty God and the good of mankind is the reason and end of government and, therefore, government in itself is a venerable ordinance of God. And forasmuch as it is principally desired and intended by the Proprietary and Governor and the freemen of the province of Pennsylvania and territories thereunto belonging to make and establish such laws as shall best preserve true christian and civil liberty in opposition to all unchristian, licentious, and unjust practices, whereby God may have his due, Caesar his due, and the people their due, from tyranny and oppression on the one side and insolence and licentiousness on the other, so that the best and firmest foundation may be laid for the present and future happiness of both the Governor and people of the province and territories aforesaid and their posterity.”
— William Penn (1644-
“That wise men have in all ages thought government necessary for the good of mankind; and, that wise governments have always thought religion necessary for the well ordering and well-
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-
“It has been said that all government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.”
— James Madison (1751-
“If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“The god of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means of all government. The government of the supreme and all-
— John Adams (1797-
“It is … (the citizens) choice, and depends upon their conduct, whether they will be respectable and prosperous, or contemptable and miserable as a Nation. This is the time of their political probation; this is the moment when the eyes of the World are turned upon them.”
— George Washington (1732-
“One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation.”
— Thomas B. Reed (1839-
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”
— John Adams (1797-
“In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce, when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance, that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward, which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.
But the most deplorable effect of all, is that diminution of attachment and reverence, which steals into the hearts of the people, towards a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity, and disappoints so many of their flattering hopes. No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected, without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.”
— James Madison (1751-
“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents… There is, also, an artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth without either virtue or talents. … The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. … May we not even say that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.
“Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions. There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind is more honest that they are.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“If justice, good faith, honor, gratitude and all the other qualities which ennoble the character of a nation and fulfill the ends of government be the fruits of our establishments, the cause of liberty will acquire a dignity and lustre, which it has never yet enjoyed, and an example will be set, which cannot but have the most favourable influence on the rights on mankind. If on the other side, our governments should be unfortunately blotted with the reverse of these cardinal and essential virtues, the great cause which we have engaged to vindicate, will be dishonored and betrayed; the last and fairest experiment in favor of the rights of human nature will be turned against them; and their patrons and friends exposed to be insulted and silenced by the votaries of tyranny and usurpation.”
— James Madison (1751-
“Self-
— Eldridge Gerry (1744–1814) Statesman, Diplomat, 5th Vice President of the U.S.
“The immediate gift of the Creator obliges every one…to resist the first approaches of tyranny, which at this day threaten to sweep away the rights for which the brave Sons of America have fought ….”
— Eldridge Gerry (1744–1814) Statesman, Diplomat, 5th Vice President of the U.S.
“A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-
“How strangely will the tools of a tyrant pervert the plain meaning of words.”
— Samuel Adams (1722–1803) Father of the American Revolution, Patriot and Statesman
“It is alleged by men of loose principles…that religion and morality are not necessary or important qualifications for political stations. But the Scriptures teach a different doctrine. They direct that rulers should be men who rule in the fear of God, able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness. … And it is to the neglect of this rule of conduct in our citizens, that we must ascribe the multiplied frauds, breeches of trust, peculations and embezzlements of public property which astonish even ourselves; which tarnish the character of our country; which disgrace a republican government; and which will tend to reconcile men to monarchs in other countries and even our own.”
— Noah Webster (1758-
“I therefore urge upon all the voters of our country, without reference to party, that they assemble tomorrow at their respective voting places in the exercise of the high office of American citizenship, that they approach the ballot box in the spirit that they would approach a sacrament, and there, disregarding all appeals to passion and prejudice, dedicating themselves truly and wholly to the welfare of their country, they make their choice of public officers solely in the light of their own conscience. When an election is so held, when a choice is so made, it results in the real rule of the people, it warrants and sustains the belief that the voice of the people is the voice of God.
— Calvin Coolidge (1872-
“It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.”
— James Monroe (1758-
“There is always a body of firm patriots, who often shake a corrupt administration. Take mankind as they are, and what are they governed by? Their passions. There may be in every government a few choice spirits, who may act from more worthy motives. One great error is that we suppose mankind is more honest that they are.
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-
“Having fasted and prayed…they joined together in a holy Covenant with the Lord and with one another… Those who are chosen to a place in government, must be men truly fearing God, wise and learned in the truths of Christ… Neither will any Christian of a sound judgment vote for any, but those who earnestly contend for the faith.”
— Edward Johnson Those who are chosen to a place in government, must be men truly fearing God, wise and learned in the truths of Christ
“Those who are chosen to a place in government, must be men truly fearing God, wise and learned in the truths of Christ…Neither will any Christian of a sound judgment vote for any, but those who earnestly contend for the faith.”
— Edward Johnson (1598-
“What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence? … Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seed of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the strength of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.”
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“Trample on the rights [God given] of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.”
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the United States
“It will be conceded that every man’s first duty is to God; it will also be conceded, and with strong emphasis, that a Christian’s first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code of morals to the polls and vote them. Whenever he shall do that, he will not find himself voting for an unclean man, a dishonest man. Whenever a Christian votes, he votes against God or for Him, and he knows this quite well. God is an issue in every election; He is a candidate in the person of every clean nominee on every ticket; His purity and His approval are there, to be voted for or voted against, and no fealty to party can absolve His servant from his higher and more exacting fealty to Him; He takes precedence of party, duty to Him is above every claim of party.
If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease. They would elect every clean candidate in the United States, and defeat every soiled one. Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket, and graft would cease. …
If the Christians of America could be persuaded to vote God and a clean ticket, it would bring about a moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country.”
— Mark Twain – 1835-
“It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation’s humble, acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling Providence.”
— Franklin Pierce (1804-
“Progress has brought us both unbounded opportunities and unbridled difficulties. Thus, the measure of our civilization will not be that we have done much, but what we have done with that much. I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism. The thought of modern industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream worth dreaming. The thought of industry in the hands of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The choice between the two is upon us.”
— Theodore Roosevelt (1901-
“Perhaps you and I have lived with this miracle too long to be properly appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again. Knowing this, it is hard to explain those who even today would question the people’s capacity for self-
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his arm, whose heart turns away from the LORD. 6 He is like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”
— Jeremiah 17: 5-
“Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
— The Declaration of Independence
“Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself. … [I] hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“You can’t be for big government, big taxes and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.”
— Ephesians 5:1-
“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“Moreover choose able men from all the people, such as fear God, men who are trustworthy and who hate a bribe; and place such men over the people as rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.”
— Exodus 18:21 RSV
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”
— Isaiah 5:20 RSV
“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule, the people groan.”
— Proverbs 29:2 RSV
“Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled –
— Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) Sixteenth President of the U.S., Address to Congress July 4, 1861
“Patriotism is easy to understand in America; it means looking ot for yourself by looking out for your country.”
— Calvin Coolidge (1872-
“But the educated citizen knows how much more there is to know. He knows that “knowledge is power,” more so today than ever before. He knows that only an educated and informed people will be a free people, that the ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all, and that if we can, as Jefferson put it, “enlighten the people generally … tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” And, therefore, the educated citizen has a special obligation to encourage the pursuit of learning, to promote exploration of the unknown, to preserve the freedom of inquiry, to support the advancement of research, and to assist at every level of government the improvement of education for all Americans, from grade school to graduate school.”
— John F. Kennedy (1917-
“If we don’t have a proper fundamental [Biblical] moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except for the State.”
— Harry S. Truman (1884-
“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“We can’t have it both ways. We can’t expect God to protect us in a crisis and just leave Him over there on the shelf in our day-
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“Government that is big enough to give you everything you want is more likely to simply take everything you’ve got.”
— Ronald Reagan (1911-
“See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.”
— Colossians 2:8 RSV
“We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-
“The greatest danger the Republic faces is its growing number of under-
— Bernie G. Ruchin –
“When you put ungodly people in office you put ungodly principles in office. God can’t bless ungodly principles therefore God can’t bless you for promoting ungodly principles. If you put Godly people in office you put Godly in office God can bless Godly principles therefore he can bless you for promoting Godly principles.”
— David Barton, Author and Public Speaker on America’s Biblical Heritage (D. James Kennedy, America’s Godly Heritage)
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
— Alexis de Toqueville (1805-
“The men the American people admire the most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
— Thomas Sowell (1930) Economist, Political Philosopher, and Author
“The best argument against democracy is a five-
— Winston Churchill (1874-
“The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.”
— G.K. Chesterton (1874-
“Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.”
— Neal A Boortz, Jr. (1945) Author, Attorney and Former Radio Host
Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture of the Eisenhower administration Nikita Khrushchev said…
“You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of Socialism until you will finally wake up and find that you already have communism. We won’t have to fight you, we will so weaken your economy until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-
“Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-
— John Locke (1632-
“No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”
— Unknown
“All government is, in its essence, organized exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the implacable enemy of every industrious and well-
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.”
— Herbert Hoover (1874-
“Moreover choose able men from all the people, such as fear God, men who are trustworthy and who hate a bribe; and place such men over the people as rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens.”
— Exodus 18:21 RSV
“The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.”
— Frederic Bastiat (1801-
“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” — Ecclesiastes 12:13-
“The fear of man lays a snare, but he who trusts in the LORD is safe.”
— Proverbs 29:25 RSV
“So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.”
— Voltaire [François-
“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”
— Ayn Rand (1905-
“The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“The Framers [of the Constitution] knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.”
— Hugo Black (1886-
“The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”
— Will Rogers (1879-
“The Framers [of the Constitution] knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.”
— Hugo Black (1886-
“The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”
— Will Rogers (1879-
“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“Thank God we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”
— Will Rogers (1879-
“For we know when a nation goes down and never comes back, when society or civilization perishes, one condition may always be found. They forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what brought them along.”
— Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) Writer, Editor, and Poet.
“For that reason among many, the United States will suffer unless there is placed into your government a group that fears the Lord if they cannot love the Lord. They will fear Him and find measures to stop the slaughter of the unborn.”
— Our Lady of the Roses, April 14, 1984
A Democracy: Three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.
A Republic: The flock gets to vote for which wolves vote on dinner.
A Constitutional Republic: Voting on dinner is expressly forbidden, and the sheep are armed.
Federal Government: The means by which the sheep will be fooled into voting for a Democracy.
— Author unknown
Definition: Any act by government or agents contrary to Constitution or law is a crime, not “just politics”!
— James H. Dearmore II – Preacher Baptist Missionary
“Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”
— George Bernard Shaw (1856-
“Are you so blind that you do not recognize the acceleration of sin among you? Murders abound, thievery, all manner of carnage, destruction of young souls, abortion, homosexuality, condemned from the beginning of time by the Eternal Father. Yet sin has become a way of life. Sin is condoned now, even unto the highest judge of your land and your lands throughout the world. As you have sown so shall you reap. Sin is death, not only of the spirit, but of the body. Wars are a punishment for man’s sin, his greed, his avarice.”
— Our Lady of the Roses, August 14, 1981
“Dishonesty, cowardice and duplicity are never impulsive.”
— George Raymond Knight (1941 – ) Historian and educator
“When God wants to judge a nation, He gives them wicked rulers.”
— John Calvin (1509-
“God has …. 99% of the time done judgements that you will find in the Old Testament, that is he has used nations with their weapons of destruction that have had at that point in time to do his judgements. …. He will use existing nations with their arsenal of weapons to do his judgements.”
— Larry Nassa, Former Dept. of Defense Employee, Author & Biblical Researcher, Radio Interview 8-
“God chastises those he loves and all through history whether you want to go back to the Old Testament or New Testament God has always punished all nations when they go against God. When ever mankind drifts away God, pushes them back in line. So, it isn’t a matter of saying Ok where has scriptures warned me that if my country does such and such. Well it has warned us about morality, basic charity as a society. When society differs and goes against God, we a country were supposed to be a nation under God have given over to a million abortions a year, we are accepting homosexuality as a normal life style, our country is pursing immoral act with in other nations, to where our country it self has become a godless nation. And God himself does not sit back and say oh well let them do what they want to do. God is God and God is going to insure and insist that mankind keep his attention on him one way or another. God doesn’t need 6 billion faithful people that are forced into fidelity, he wants mankind stay in faith fidelity with him by free will and choice. And, God has always through history as the scriptures records and predicts that God purifies mankind to make us worthy to accept us him and receive him as a God.”
— Father Andrew Wingate, Founder of “Oblates of St. Therese”, Radio Interview Jan 8, 2003
“God holds his people responsible for righteousness, not for results.”
— Beth Moore ( 1957-
“Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. …Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the ‘new, wonderful good society’ which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean ‘more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.’ Julius was always an ambitious villain, but he is only one man.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
— Plato (427BC-
“Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, ‘Long live the King …
The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.”
— Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis (Juvenal) (~60–140) Roman Satirist and Poet
“The evil was not in bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies and the excitement of games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never appease.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-
“Things in our country run in spite of the government, not by the aid of it.”
— Will Rogers (1879-
“A truly moral nation enacts policies that encourage personal responsibility and discourage self-
― Ben Carson – (1951) American Neurosurgeon & Columnist
“My wife always tells my kids — there’s always free cheese in the mousetrap.”
— Col. Pete Martin, USMC Retired – Public testimony City Council Meeting Concord, New Hampshire August 12, 2013
“We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-
“The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one.”
— Adolph Hitler (1889-
“It is God Who permits it all. But, at the same time, it demonstrates how much punishment can be evoked for not paying attention to God’s dictates.”
— Sister Lucy (1907 –
“God…my self in the Bronx always says that God has a funny sense of humor. ..He has a way of treating things, he deals with each individual soul delicately, tenderly, compassionately but he deals with groups of people [country] according to certain laws and he always observes those laws and that means the innocent are punished with the evil.”
— Father Malachi Martin (1921-
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”
— Hosea 4:6 RSV
“Of Solomon. Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.”
— Psalms 127:1 RSV
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
— Galatians 5:1 RSV
“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” “The law commit legal plunder by violating liberty and property.” “It is impossible to introduce into society a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.”
“The law commit legal plunder by violating liberty and property.”
— Frederic Bastiat (1801-
?That government is best which governs least.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) Author, Poet and Philosopher
“For the habitual truth-
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“What governs men is the fear of truth.”
— Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-
“The futher a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”
— George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-
“To their duty to God, youth should realize their duty to our country. They should love and honor the Constitution of the United States, the basic concepts and principles upon which this nation has been established. Yes, they need to develop a love for our free institutions.”
— Ezra Taft Benson (1899-
“It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume …that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men.”
— Edmund Burke (1729-
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.”
— Winston Churchill (1874-
“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
— Winston Churchill (1874-
“Any man who is under thirty, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over thirty, and is not a conservative, has no brains.”
— Winston Churchill (1874-
“In like manner, the disbelief of a Divine Providence renders a man uncapable of holding any public station; for, since kings avow themselves to be the deputies of Providence.”
— Jonathan Swift (1667-
“But the truth is that it is only by believing in God that we can ever criticize the government. Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God. That fact is written all across human history; but it is written most plainly across the recent history of Russia; which was created by Lenin. There the government is the God, and all the more the God, because it proclaims aloud in accents of thunder … one essential commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods but Me.””
— G.K. Chesterton (1874-
“We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898 -1963) Irish Writer, Scholar, and Christian Apologists
“Vote: The instrument and symbol of a free man’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.”
— Ambrose Bierce (1842-
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
— George Orwell [Eric Arthur Blair] (1903 – 1950) The British novelist & essayist
“One of the major differences between the right and the left concerns the question of authority: To whom do we owe obedience and who is the ultimate moral authority? For the right, the primary moral authority is God (or, for secular conservatives, Judeo-
— Dennis Prager (1948-
“If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves.”
— Dennis Prager (1948-
“Perhaps the best parallel to the attitude of the general public towards politics is to be found in the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Of the crowds that line the towing path every year from Putney to Mortlake there are few that have ever been to either University, have ever known anyone who has been to either, have even the remotest or most shadowy connection with either. Yet they take sides enthusiastically, and would almost be prepared to shed blood for their “fancy.” Note that this is not a mere question of backing your judgment on the merits of the two crews. Not one man in ten knows anything about that, and many are proud of always sticking to the same side year after year, of being always ” Oxford ” or ” Cambridge,” whether their favourite colour wins or loses. And just as they vehemently take sides with a University to which they have never been, so they take sides as vehemently with a party which they do not control and from which they can never hope for the smallest benefit.
Such are the mass of the supporters of either party. They derive their political opinions originally from some family tradition or some fanciful preference, but they back them with all the passion of sportsmen. In a vague subconscious way they know it is a game, but they happen to enjoy playing the game.
Nevertheless, there is a section of the public, not perhaps large, but certainly increasing, which is beginning to be uneasy about the Party System. It is natural to men to wish to have voice in the government of their native land, and many are beginning to feel that they have no such effective voice to-
— Hilaire Belloc [Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc] (1870-
“When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils, but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil”
— Barron Charles de Montesquieu (1689-
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-
“It is discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
— Noel Coward (1899-
“When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-
“Your silence gives consent.”
— Plato (427BC-
“You don’t have a right to vote, you’ve got a duty of vote.”
— David Barton, Author and Public Speaker on America’s Biblical Heritage
“Yet [Americans] repeatedly vote for incumbents who align themselves with anti-
— Gary W. Kelly Sr. Author of the book Lessons of the Holy Spirit
“The news is not about news anymore. It’s about protecting some people, destroying others and shoving a socialist agenda down the collective throats of America.”
— Charlie Daniels (1936 –
“The problem of ignorance is unlikely to be ameliorated by increasing voter knowledge because demand for information, not the supply of it, is the major constraint on political knowledge. Despite dramatic expansions of education and information sources, abundant evidence shows the scope of political ignorance is remarkably persistent over time. New information technologies have served primarily to increase the knowledge of the already well-
— George Will (1941) Columnist and Author
“The duty of a lawmaker is not to be popular so that you get reelected. Your duty is to do what is right. Your serve a much higher power. You serve the people but you serve the people on behalf of God. .. the best way you can serve the people is by doing what is right.
— George Barna –
“Like the Pharisees and Sadducees, many people today do not recognize God reaching out to them, nor do they discover the truth of God’s Word and the simple solutions needed to turn out situation around. Most tragically, they do not foresee their own inevitable destruction because they have rejected God’s personal warning. … Today, America has only two choices: continue its ungodly path to destruction, or respond to God’s call for repentance. … He will restore our nation even at this late hour.
— William (Bill) R. Bright (1921-
“Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand it completely.”
— Proverbs 28:5
“There are six things which the LORD hates, seven which are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and a man who sows discord among brothers.”
— Proverbs 6:16-
“Judgment is real, just as heaven and hell are real … An intrinsic evil (abortion, contraception, premarital sex, same-
all of us will be judged by how we vote. And, yes, there are many Catholics with erroneous consciences who have made prudential judgments that are wrong and have consistently made prudential judgments that are wrong.
Either they do not fully understand the teaching of the Church or they choose to ignore that teaching and they choose an evil, and an intrinsic evil.
For any society to be just, it must reflect the order of God …There are fundamental rights that no one can violate and those are the inalienable rights that our forefathers recognized so clearly –
— Samuel J. Aquila (1950) Catholic Archbishop of Denver
“The difference between a politician and a statesman is the fear of God.”
— David Barton, Author and Public Speaker on America’s Biblical Heritage
“A nation always gets the kind of politicians it deserves. If a time ever comes when the religious Jews, Protestant s and Catholics ever have to suffer under a totalitarian state, which would deny to them the right worship God according to the light of their conscience, it will be because for years they thought it made no difference what kind of people represented them in Congress, and because they abandoned the spiritual in the realm of the temporal.”
— Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic Archbishop, Professor, Radio & Television Show Host, The Fulton Sheen Program
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“Western Christian liberals have therefore promoted something which they think they have salvaged from Christianity, but it is as much like real Christianity as a paste diamond is to the real gemstone.
Their religion has become one of bland tolerance. They mistake political correctness for charity, shallow optimism for hope and an ideology for faith. …
the liberals’ ideology is a counterfeit form of faith which forbids them to castigate, exclude or expel anyone and refuses to acknowledge that they have such a thing as an enemy.
Their shallow optimism is their substitute for hope and this blinds them … that their culture is doomed and their country about to collapse.
Their tolerant political correctness is their artificial form of charity which is spineless and gutless and has nothing to offer except more bland tolerance and acceptance of everything and everyone. These people would probably tolerate and grant “rights” to a serial killer who entered their home.”
— Dwight Longenecker –
“For the sin of the person, the person is responsible and pays for it, but for the sin of the nation all the people pay for it because rulers who enact unjust laws do so on behalf of the people who elected them.”
— Lúcia de Jesus Rosa Santos [Sister Mary Lucy of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart] (1907-
“The United States is the world’s best hope. …. Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall, freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin.”
— Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-
Fulfilling our Biblical Duty to Choose Godly Officials –
Civil government is a divine institution of God. It exists to protect the life, liberty, and property of citizens, enabling them to more effectively advance the Kingdom of God. Civil leaders are servants of the people and of God, and are to govern under His higher authority. Rulers are to be ministers of God for good. (See Rom. 13:1-
For government to fulfill its divine mission, Christians must be involved in selecting good men and women to office. Ideally they would meet all the qualifications for Godly officials. When Moses told the Israelites to select from among them those who would govern them, he set forth a number of Biblical qualifications. He said: “You shall select out of all the people, able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain” (Ex. 18:21). “Choose wise and discerning and experienced men” (Deut. 1:13). He cited three general qualifications for governing officials: fear of God, Christian character, and Biblical worldview.
1. Fear God …2. Christian Character …3. Biblical Worldview …”-
— Stephen McDowell –
“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. Thus, a duty is imposed on everyone which no one must evade, notwithstanding the risks and danger to him or his family.”
— Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German born Theoretical Physicist
“Where-
— John Locke (1632-
“But in truth, every presidential inauguration is a re-
Washington’s inaugural address emphasized the miraculous nature of the American Revolution. He stressed, “No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States.” He added that some “token of providential agency” seemed to play a role in the country’s independence. …
The American inaugural, Rabbi Sacks suggests, “the United States is the only country today whose political discourse is framed by the idea of covenant,” a biblical compact in which a nation dedicates itself to a series of principles in the presence of God. The American inaugural, Rabbi Sacks suggests, is often a moment of American covenant renewal, a rededication to founding ideals.
Washington’s first inauguration was the only time Americans were essentially united behind a new president. Since then, the start of a new administration means that millions of Americans are unhappy with the electorate’s decision. Yet Washington showed that an American inauguration, unlike a monarch’s coronation, is less a celebration of the new head of state than of the U.S. system of government and the divine blessings bestowed upon it.”
— Meir Yaakov Soloveichik (1977 –
“When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.”
— Barron Charles de Montesquieu (1689-
“Any politician who doesn’t know the difference between serving the public an killing the public (abortion) should not be in office.”
— Anonymous
“Boy, y’all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham. … God, I hate to say it, because these have been my friends, but let me tell you when it comes to this–you looking for a fair process? You came to the wrong town at the wrong time, my friend.”
– Lindsey Graham – United States Senator from South Carolina (During Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in 2018)
Choose wisely. Eternity is in the balance. ” How much does your vote matter in the big picture — your single, individual, one-time vote?
Well, that depends on which big picture you are referring to — the earthly one, or the other-earthly one. On an earthly level, the actual effect that any one single vote has varies from state to state depending on whether you are in a battleground state— and if you are in a battleground state, if you are in one of those battleground counties.
For the record, the county that Church Militant is located in — Oakland County, Michigan, just a mile or so north of Detroit — is one of those 25 battleground counties where the election will be determined (if there isn’t massive voter fraud and vote tabulation fraud, that is). But even in a location like this, the odds that any single vote will make a statistical difference are mind-numbingly low. Experts say you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning twice and winning the lotto than the chance that your individual vote on its own will make any difference.
In fact, speaking in mathematical terms, the odds are so close to zero that mathematicians actually count it as zero. So much for the earthly level analysis.
But there is another analysis, much more important, and this one pertains to the supernatural, the otherworldly. When you step into that booth, your vote becomes super-important, supernaturally important, because there is no one there but you and God. And depending on how you vote, your eternal destiny could hang in the balance. If you think that is hyperbole, consider this.
When you vote, you bring your entire self, all that you are, to that vote — your intellect, your will, your intent, your desires for how a country, hundreds of millions of others are going to be impacted, if the worldview you support prevails.
Voting is the strongest single action you can take to bring your worldview into reality, in the earthly order of things. It is a sacred duty, not because it’s how a democratic republic is supposed to function and soldiers died to protect your right to vote, as true as all that is. But there is in the act of how you cast your vote — a moment of reckoning with the Divine. It is your conscience face to face with Almighty God.
In political terms, it is the secular equivalent of the sacrament of confession. You step into a small area and are confronted by your conscience, and you “confess” your worldview. Do you make a good one, or a bad one? Do you come face to face with all your personal failings in terms of your vision of the world and your secret motivations? What legacy for those who follow do you wish to leave? Do you proceed down a path of voting according to your feelings and be disregarding of the truth? Do you use the personality of one or the other as a convenient cover to vote for the one who best excuses your sin or gives you the greatest rationalization to continue in your sin?
See, there is no “cover” in the voting booth. It’s you and God — and He knows.
Part of fallen human psychology involves wanting others to affirm us in our sin and persuading others to affirm us in our sin. That’s part of what inspires people to gin up support for their own evil, which they do in various ways, by bullying, or playing the victim, or trying to convince others. Good people seek first the good of others and try to persuade them to the good for their own good. Evil people seek their own desires and try to inspire others to condone their evil without a concern for the good of those they corrupt.
Are you voting for whomever to excuse a past sin or evil you do not wish to confront? Then your vote is a lie because it is covering up a truth. Are you voting for whomever because you are currently in a state of sin or have a guilty conscience over something and do not want to face the truth? Then your vote is a lie because it is covering up a truth.
And what’s worse, you are allowing others to bear the consequences of your sin. Rather than clear your conscience, you are willing to inflict the consequences of your sin on the rest of the nation with no regard for them.
All of this — every thought, inkling, desire, motivation, every last bit of you — is present in the quiet and solitude of the voting booth. This is why how you vote can be a strong indicator of your eternal destiny, because you bring everything of who you are into that booth, and by voting, you pledge all of yourself — every last fiber of who you are ‚ commit yourself to a single moment that has everlasting effects.
Choose wisely. For the country, overall not much is on the line with your individual vote. For you, eternity could very well be on the line.”
– Michael Voris – Catholic Author, Speaker, Aplologist, and Founder and President of Saint Michael’s Media