Thursday, July 8, 2021

Founding Wisdom—Part II: George Washington and Others

I heard someone mention this week that the way to get people—mainly young people—to love this country is for them to learn its history. They might have been talking about learning to love the Constitution and Declaration of Independence by studying them. I’m not sure whom to credit now, but it may have been David Barton of Wallbuilders—check out their extraordinary Signers of the Declaration resource page

Anyway, with the intention of increasing love for the ideals of this country, I’m continuing the celebration of Independence Day with words from our founders.

I had so many quotes from Thomas Jefferson that I gave him his own day, in the last post. Today will be a few others of the 56 men who signed the Declaration back in 1776, risking their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, plus others who weren’t among those signers, but who nevertheless took those risks for our freedom.

 

George Washington

Washington Praying painting by Arnold Friberg
image from Wikipedia

"I have often expressed my sentiments that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."—George Washington (To the General Committee of the United Baptist Churches in Virginia)

 

The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.—George Washington (First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789)

 

Washington's inauguration by Howard Pyle
image found here
"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency."—George Washington (First Inaugural Address)

 

Your love of liberty, your respect for the laws, your habits of industry, and your practice of moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness.—George Washington

 

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”—George Washington

 

 

James Madison

James Madison portrait by John Vanderlyn
image from Wikipedia

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."—James Madison

 

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined…[and] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.”—James Madison (Federalist 45)

 

“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse.”

—James Madison

 

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”—James Madison

James Madison engraving by David Edwin
image from Wikipedia
 


“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”—James Madison (Federalist 51)

 

“If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government that is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”—James Madison (Federalist 51)

 

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others."—James Madison.

 

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow."—James Madison (Federalist 62)

 

 

John Adams

John Adams portrait by Gilbert Stuart
image from Wikipedia

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.”—John Adams
(A Defense of the Constitutions of Governments of the United States of America, 1787)

 

I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration [of Independence], and support and defend these States. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph in that day's transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not."—John Adams, July 3, 1776

 

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.—John Adams (1770, closing argument in defense of a British soldier)

John Adams portrait by John Trumbull
image from Wikipedia
 


"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it."—John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

 

“All are subject by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government, yet no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them.”—John Adams (Discourses on Davila—XV, 1776)

 

"You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe."—John Adams

 

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.—John Adams

 

The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations... this radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.—John Adams (John Adams to Hezekiah Niles, Feb. 13, 1818. Cited in The Works of John Adams, vol. 10, p. 282)

 

 

Samuel Adams

Samuel Adams portrait by John Singleton Copley
image from Wikipedia
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."—Samuel Adams

 

"Here therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man."—Samuel Adams

 

"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!"—Samuel Adams

 

“All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.”Samuel Adams

 

Freedom of thought and the right of private judgment, in matters of conscience, driven from every other corner of the earth, direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.—Samuel Adams

 

If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.—Samuel Adams

 

 

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin portrait by Joseph Duplessis
image from Wikipedia

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it."—Benjamin Franklin

 

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."—Benjamin Franklin

 

It is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own.—Benjamin Franklin

 

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."—Benjamin Franklin

 

 

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton miniature attributed
to Charles Shirreff, image from Wikipedia

"For my own part, I sincerely esteem it [the Constitution] a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests."—Alexander Hamilton

 

“Here, sir, the people govern.”—Alexander Hamilton

 

"If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws—the first growing out of the last.... A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government."—Alexander Hamilton (Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, Aug 28, 1794)

 

 

Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine portrait by Laurent Dabos
image from Wikipedia

"What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue."—Thomas Paine

 

“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”—Thomas Paine (American Crisis)

 

Tyranny like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.—Thomas Paine (The America Crisis)

 

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.—Thomas Paine (Common Sense)

 

“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”—Thomas Paine

 

All the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make or invent or contrive principles. He can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author.—Thomas Paine

 

 

Benjamin Rush

Dr. Benjamin Rush
image found here

“The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty.”—Benjamin Rush

 

"Where there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community."—Benjamin Rush (1788)

 

“Unless we see medical freedom put into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men, and deny equal privilege to others, will be to constitution the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic, and have no place in a Republic. The Constitution of this Republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.”—Dr. Benjamin Rush, MD (this is a paraphrase of his sentiments, developed after his death in 1813, not an actual quote)

 

When describing 24 “causes which have retarded the progress of our science,” this was number 24:

“Conferring exclusive privileges upon bodies of physicians, and forbidding men of equal talents and knowledge, under severe penalties from practicing medicine within certain districts of cities and countries.

"Such institutions, however sanctioned by ancient charters and names, are the Bastilles of our science.”—Dr. Benjamin Rush

 

 

Patrick Henry portrait by
George Bagby Matthews
image from Wikipedia
Patrick Henry


"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." — Patrick Henry

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