Founding Fathers of the United States Quotes

“United States”

“American Revolution”

“History of the United States”

“Wikicommons: -inline”

“All the leading Founders affirmed on many occasions that blacks are created equal to whites and that slavery is wrong.”

“Ironically, the founders of the republic have been hailed and lionized by left, right, and center for—in effect—creating the first apartheid state.”

“They were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us.”

“Being good gentlemen of the Enlightenment, the Founders thought that the demise of slavery would come about naturally. Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, all believed that somehow slavery would disappear.”

“The achievements of women's rights movements, for instance, were real and important, but you cannot understand them if you do not first understand the founding fathers’ achievement in establishing a system of government based on the guarantee of rights.”

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

“Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation — especially the temptation to abuse power over others.”

“For the founders, the laws of nature and of nature’s God — accessible to all rational humans — supply the sufficient ground for [the] republican morality necessary to make self-government work. Demanding, as [Douglas] Wilson seems to do, that public officials proclaim their personal faith in Christ is neither wise, nor moral, nor American, nor Christian.”

“We can not overestimate the fervent love of liberty, the intelligent courage, and the sum of common sense with which our fathers made the great experiment of self-government. When they found, after a short trial, that the confederacy of states, was too weak to meet the necessities of a vigorous and expanding republic, they boldly set it aside, and in its stead established a National Union, founded directly upon the will of the people, endowed with full power of self-preservation and ample authority for the accomplishment of its great object.”

“[Thomas] Jefferson spoke for all the most prominent members of the revolutionary generation in urging posterity not to accept their political prescriptions as sacred script. It is richly ironic that one of the few original intentions they all shared was opposition to any judicial doctrine of " original intent." To be sure, they all wished to be remembered, but they did not want to be embalmed.”

“What has suddenly happened is that the white race has lost its heroes. Worse, its heroes have been revealed as villains and its greatest heroes as the arch-villains. The new generations of whites, appalled by the sanguine and despicable record carved over the face of the globe by their race in the last five hundred years, are rejecting the panoply of white heroes, whose heroism consisted in erecting the inglorious edifice of colonialism and imperialism; heroes whose careers rested on a system of foreign and domestic exploitation, rooted in the myth of white supremacy and the manifest destiny of the white race.”

“The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence, were the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united, and the general principles of English and American liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her independence. Now 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; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.”

“There is something pathetic in seeing Americans almost daily besmirching unconsciously their ideals and their traditions — all thanks to a faulty education. The Founding Fathers would turn in their graves if they could hear themselves called "Democrats"; America indeed was never a democracy, and never will be . . . unless we make "democracy work," and replace, within the framework of a "pure democracy," our legislation by the Gallup Poll. Those who have been taught the wrong interpretation may ask their money back from the schools where they have wasted their adolescence. And the textbooks which preach a spurious democracy may still provide us with fuel in cold days to come.”

“The patriots who built our country were not villains, they were heroes whose courageous deeds improved the Earth beyond measure. The beauty and the glory of our constitutional system is that it gives us the tools to fight injustice, to heal division, and to continue the work of our Founding Fathers by expanding and growing the blessings of America. If you believe in justice, if you believe in freedom, if you believe in peace, then you must cherish the principles of our founding and the text of our Constitution. It is our founding and our Constitution. It is a firm foundation upon which all progress is achieved. That’s why our country is so strong, even despite terrible things that happen over the generations.”

“Autocracy declares the divine right of kings; its authority cannot be questioned; its powers are arbitrarily or unjustly administered.
Democracy is the "direct" rule of the people and has been repeatedly tried without success.
Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They "made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy . . . and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic."
Madison, in the Federalist, emphasized the fact that this government was a republic and not a democracy, the Constitution makers having considered both an autocracy and a democracy as undesirable forms of government while "a republic . . . promises the cure for which we are seeking".”

“About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.”