Founding Fathers Quotes

I don't believe in democracy… neither did our white forefathers. I believe, as they did, in a republican authoritarian republic with a limited electorate - just like the one the writers of our Constitution meant this country to be. When these white Christian patriots sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, there were no black citizens for them to worry about.

The Bible is the rock on which this Republic rests.

The earth always belongs to the living.

I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such;… I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution….It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.

In American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer.

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity

United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.

The Founding Fathers provided a way to reverse unpopular Supreme Court decisions: a constitutional amendment.

It is notable that almost all the Founding Fathers were first generation, college graduates.

We're Americans. That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country of the world.

Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.

When I found out that there was eight Presidents before George Washington, I wanted to smack somebody.

Posterity will talk of Washington as the founder of a great empire, when my name shall be lost in the vortex of revolution.

I was born in the U.S. This is my country.

From the first moment of independence, the United States has been dedicated to innovation as a way of government and a way of life.

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.

There's never been a nation like the United States, ever. It begins with the principles of our founding documents, principles that recognize that our rights come from God, not from our government.

America was founded on satanism.

The Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This is not for someone who's in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This [gun control] is for us when our government becomes tyrannical...

The Union is older than any of the States, and, in fact created them as States.

I believe in the country America used to be.

As the people of the United States enjoy the great merit of having established a system of Government on the basis of human rights, and of giving it a form without example, which, as they believe, unites the greatest national strength with the best security for public order and individual liberty, they owe to themselves, to their posterity and to the world, a preservation of the system in its purity, its symmetry, and its authenticity.

I'm a Progressive. Much in the same way our founding fathers - who, oddly enough, wouldn't get elected today - were Progressives.

I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.

Here is a diversity of religions, educations, manners, interest, such as it would seem almost impossible to unite in one plan of conduct.