OBSERVATIONS FROM OUR FOUNDING FATHERS
The Patriot Post – Mid-Day Digest
THOMAS JEFFERSON
It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
— (1775)
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.
— (1785)
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.
— (1785)
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
— (1790)
The second office of this government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.
— (1797)
Excessive taxation ... will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.
— (1798)
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
— (1800)
It is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government... Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever persuasion, religious or political.
— (1801)
The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption — a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible.
— (1801)
Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules.
— (1801)
To restore ... harmony ... to render us again one people acting as one nation should be the object of every man really a patriot.
— (1801)
It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions.
— (1808)
I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.
— (1808)
In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely.
— (1810)
If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.
— (1811)
Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reenactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free.
— (1813)
I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast ... would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it.
— (1814)
We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
— (1816)
The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
— (1816)
Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect.
— (1817)
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
— (1820)
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, and talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.
— (1821)
I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.
— (1821)
Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.
— (1822)
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.
— (1823)
God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.
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