“An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens . . . There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my…
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“It may be that the Deity can forgive sins, but I do not see how.” Socrates – comment to Plato c.500 B.C.
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“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he breaks, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.” John P. Curran
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“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.…
Notable Quotable
In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my…
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“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.” Thomas Jefferson
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“The Constitution shall never be construed… to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” Samuel Adams
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“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that, if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too.” William Somerset Maughan – 1941
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“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’…
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“That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” George Mason – the Virginia Declaration…
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“[T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction. James Madison – Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention,…
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“There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 per cent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.” Theodore Roosevelt
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“The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.” Thomas Jefferson – Declaration and Protest of Virginia, 1825.
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“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” James Madison – speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788
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“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams