Quotes of the Founding Fathers

Listen to what the Founding Fathers had to say about our great nation, America.

Patrick Henry :

"Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Beside, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of Nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us."
War is Inevitable, March 1775.

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James Madison :

"The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone."

"It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution.
The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much ...to forget it."

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Samuel Adams :

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards."

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John Adams :

"People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity."

"Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will be America's heart, her benedictions and prayers, but she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator of her own."

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Alexander Hamilton :

"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

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Benjamin Franklin :

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

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George Washington :

"I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man."

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Thomas Jefferson :

"On every question of construction of the Constitution, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed."