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

Great Words from Great Presidents

It’s Presidents’ Day. We spent it with grandkids. Went to a fun little rock shot to satisfy a granddaughter’s new interest in geology, went to the park, did some artwork, and some cooking.

We are living after the manner of happiness[i]—which is something we can still do in this great country.

To mark the holiday here today, I’ll share a few quotes (mostly that I think I haven’t shared before) from some favorite presidents. Just one from George Washington today (shared on Facebook today by Wallbuilders), the rest from Abraham Lincoln.

  

The world has never had a good definition of liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in need of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names—liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.— Abraham Lincoln, in his Address at a Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Apr. 18, 1864

 

Abraham Lincoln

I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day. Lincoln Observed: The Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks, edited by Michael Burlingame (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 210.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.—Abraham Lincoln

As each man has one mouth to be fed, and one pair of hands to furnish food, it was probably intended that that particular pair of hands should feed that particular mouth.—Abraham Lincoln

Responding to a question about which side God was on during the Civil War: “I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.” Abraham Lincoln’s Stories and Speeches, ed. J. B. McClure, Chicago: Rhodes and McClure Publishing Co., 1896, pp. 185–86.)

This, and this only (will satisfy the South): cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right… Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right, and a social blessing…Let us be diverted by none of these sophistical contrivances…such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong.—Abraham Lincoln  

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.—Abraham Lincoln

No oppressed[ii] people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better than a mere change of masters.—Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on the Constitution and Union, January 1, 1861

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.—Abraham Lincoln, Lyceum Address

Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC

I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day. Lincoln Observed: The Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks edited by Michael Burlingame (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 210.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.—Abraham Lincoln

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[i] 2 Nephi 5:27 “And it came to pas that we lived after the manner of happiness.”

[ii] The quote as I found it had a comma here, after “oppressed,” and also after “better.”  It doesn’t make sense to include these, so I have omitted them, in hopes of clarifying.

Freedom and Religion Are Connected

We worked an election on Saturday. The only thing on our ballot was a school district bond election (an astounding $1.76 billion). It won, of course, with 70% of the votes. But only 4.6% of registered voters voted (10,499 for and 4,544 against). So I could talk about education, or property taxes, but I think I'll forego.

This was our first countywide election on a voting day (early voting has always been countywide). Several voting places were combined, and our alternate judge was an experienced judge and very good to work with. He was an older black man, a retired police officer, and a faithful Catholic. We had pleasant conversations with him.

It’s not surprising that a he’s part of the 90% of blacks who vote Democrat. But, getting to know him, it’s hard to imagine he’ll be happy voting for any of the pro-socialism candidates for President in their primary.

We have so much in common with other religious people. I hope at some point that translates into voting to protect our Constitution. The Blexit movement is underway, but so far aiming mostly at younger voters.

Neal A. Maxwell
image from here

Anyway, I’m thinking about religion and freedom, and how they interrelate, as I share some nuggets from my quote file today. This first one is from Neal A. Maxwell, whose language is something I have always admired. I’m currently reading his biography. Anyway, this is from a talk in 1978.

We are now entering a period of incredible ironies. Let us cite but one of these ironies which is yet in its subtle stages: we shall see in our time a maximum if indirect effort made to establish irreligion as the state religion. It is actually a new form of paganism that uses the carefully preserved and cultivated freedoms of Western civilization to shrink freedom even as it rejects the value essence of our rich Judeo-Christian heritage.

Brothers and sisters, irreligion as the state religion would be the worst of all combinations. Its orthodoxy would be insistent and its inquisitors inevitable. Its paid ministry would be numerous beyond belief. Its Caesars would be insufferably condescending. Its majorities—when faced with clear alternatives—would make the Barabbas choice, as did a mob centuries ago when Pilate confronted them with the need to decide.

Your discipleship may see the time come when religious convictions are heavily discounted. M. J. Sobran also observed, “A religious conviction is now a second-class conviction, expected to step deferentially to the back of the secular bus, and not to get uppity about it” (Human Life Review, Summer 1978, p. 58). This new irreligious imperialism seeks to disallow certain of people’s opinions simply because those opinions grow out of religious convictions. Resistance to abortion will soon be seen as primitive. Concern over the institution of the family will be viewed as untrendy and unenlightened.—Neal A. Maxwell, “Meeting the Challenges of Today,” October 1978 

Religion and Liberty are the two great objects of defensive war. Conjoined, they unite all the feelings, and call forth all the energies, of man…. Religion and liberty are the meat and the drink of the body politic. Withdraw one of them, and it languishes, consumes, and dies. If indifference to either at any time becomes the prevailing character of a people, one half of their motives to vigorous defense is lost, and the hopes of their enemies are proportionally increased. Here, eminently, they are inseparable. Without religion we may possibly retain the freedom of savages, bears, and wolves; but not the freedom of New-England. If our religion were gone, our state of society would perish with it; and nothing would be left, which would be worth defending. —Timothy Dwight, President of Yale University, “The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis,” July 4, 1798

No compact among men… can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.—George Washington, draft of First Inaugural Address, April 1798

Heaven knows the proper price to attach to something so celestial as freedom.— Thomas Payne

It was through and by the power of God, that the fathers of this country framed the Declaration of Independence, and also that great palladium of human rights, the Constitution of the United States. There is nothing of a bigoted, narrow-contracted feeling about that instrument; it is broad and comprehensive.—John Taylor, The Constitution Is an Inspired Document, p. 644

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[i], 1770

David O. McKay
image from here

If I speak plainly, and in condemnation lay bare reprehensible practices and aims of certain organizations, please do not think that I harbor ill-will or enmity in my heart towards other United States citizens whose views on political policies do not coincide with mine. But when acts and schemes are manifestly contrary to the revealed word of the Lord, we feel justified in warning people against them. We may be charitable and forbearing to the sinner, but must condemn the sin.—David O. McKay, “Jesus’ Prayer for Unity,” General Conference, October 1939

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.—Thomas Jefferson

The duty of a true patriot is to protect his country from its government.—Thomas Payne

It has been fundamental to our way of life that charity must be voluntary if it is to be charity. Compulsory benevolence is not charity. Today’s egalitarians are using the federal government to redistribute wealth in our society, not as a matter of voluntary charity, but as a matter of right.—Ezra Taft Benson, This Nation Shall Endure, p. 91

You cannot stop a decades-long march toward a socialist and authoritarian state if the family breaks down. Those who say we need to maintain a laser focus on government spending miss the forest for the trees, or refuse to accept what the Founders embraced. If we balance the budget and rein in government but do not rebuild and protect families, then the popular will for government intervention will irresistibly grow over time.—Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski, Resurgent: How Constitutional Conservatism Can Save America

Freedom and religion endure together or perish alone.—Mitt Romney, “Faith in America” speech, December 6, 2007

‎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, “Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States,” 1787

Basing state policy on relative measures devolves into covetousness.

—Bill Flax, “Don’t Like Handouts? Neither Does the Bible,” December 12, 2011 

And as ’tis folly to suppose that princes will always be wise, just and good, when we know that few have been able alone to bear the weight of a government, or to resist the temptations to ill, that accompany an unlimited power, it would be madness to presume they will for the future be free from infirmities and vices....

If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the ends of government are accomplished;--Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, pp. 319-320

Thus, the central problem of government, is a religious one, and anyone who assumes he can form his political beliefs without consulting his ethics, which have their basis in religious conviction, is deceiving himself either about the true nature of government, or his moral responsibility for its actions.—Elder H. Verlan Andersen, Many Are Called but Few Are Chosen

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[i] John Adams said this, in defense of British soldiers following the Boston Massacre. However, it is also credited to Tobias George Smollett, who in turn was translating a work, Gil Blas, from French author Alain-René Lesage. The phrase may predate all of these. 

Good Words

Sometimes when I look at what I’ve been randomly collecting in the Spherical Model quote file, I find a theme. That’s been happening lately. There’s something connecting what our Founders thought about government, and why it should be limited—and about the people, and why they must be virtuous.

I go on this great republican principle, that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom.”—James Madison (The Papers of James Madison, 11:163, June 20, 1788)

James Madison
portrait by John Vanderlyn
image from Wikipedia

“We must learn the principles of the Constitution in the tradition of the Founding Fathers.”—Ezra Taft Benson

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 Paper No. 45

[N]o bureaucratic judgment condemning a sincerely held religious belief as “irrational” or “offensive” will ever survive strict scrutiny under the First Amendment. In this country, the place of secular officials isn’t to sit in judgment of religious beliefs, but only to protect their free exercise.—Justice Neal Gorsuch, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. CADA opinion, 6-4-2018

[T]he framers of the Constitution probably assumed that religious freedom would establish religion as a watchdog over government, and believed that free churches would inevitably stand and speak against immoral and corrupt legislation. All churches not only have the right to speak out on public moral issues, but they have the solemn obligation to do so.—M. Russell Ballard, Ensign, October 1992

Sometimes the dues we pay to maintain integrity are pretty high, but

the ultimate cost of moral compromise is much higher.—Michael Josephson

Samuel Adams
Painting by John Singleton Copley
image from Wikipedia

"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 ("The Life of Samuel Adams," 1:22)

"How our governments need standards of integrity! How our communities need yardsticks to measure decency! How our neighborhoods need models of beauty and cleanliness! How our schools need continued encouragement and assistance to maintain high educational standards! Rather than spend time complaining about the direction in which these institutions are going, we need to exert our influence in shaping the right direction. A small effort by a few can result in so much good for all of mankind."—L. Tom Perry, Ensign, May 1988

"No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People 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 (from his First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789)

The hand of Heaven appears to have led us on to be, perhaps, humble instruments and means in the great Providential dispensation which is completing. We have fled from the political Sodom; let us not look back, lest we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world!—Samuel Adams, speech at Philadelphia state house, August 1, 1776

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

George Washington
portrait by Gilbert Stuart, 1795
image from Wikipedia

The power under the Constitution will always be in the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes and for a certain limited period to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is execised contrary to their interest, or not according to their wishes, their Servants can, and undoubtedly will, be recalled.—George Washington (in letter to Bushrod Washington, November 9, 1787)

“In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate, and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree…. The influence over government must be shared among all the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe.”—Thomas Jefferson (The Works of Thomas Jefferson, P. L. Ford, 8:390-1)

Emphasizing Civiization

I fill up my quote file randomly, with what happens to come across my path on a given day. But recent additions have leaned toward the Social Sphere—Civilization and how to get there. Or maybe it's that, as we've known all along, the political, economic, and social spheres are interrelated, and you don't get freedom and prosperity if you sink from civilization into savagery. So it's wise to emphasize civilization.

The Social Sphere--or Civilization Sphere

So here are some of my recent additions to the file:

There always has been, and is now more than ever, only one hope for rescue. If we abide in God’s truth revealed in his Son, then we shall know the truth and the truth will set us free. That is why I say again and again that we must dispense with our verbal arsenal that speaks only in terms of right and left. We have forgotten there is an up and a down. May God help us! We need His transforming power to change our thinking and to give us a hunger for what is true. True freedom is not in doing whatever we wish but in doing what we ought. That has been buried in America. And only one who knows the way out of the grave can give us a second chance to live: Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life that sets us free from within first, before we learn to deal with the lies around us.—Ravi Zacharias, “The Soul of America,” 7-2-2016

The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

—John F Kennedy

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

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day." Lincoln Observed: The Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks edited by Michael Burlingame (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), p. 210.

I feel a strong desire to tell you—and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me—which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking about which is the worse. You see why of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.—Ronald Reagan

Happiness, whether in despotism or democracy, whether in slavery or liberty, can never be found without virtue.—John Adams

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

Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life.—Dwight D. Eisenhower

"[N]o wall of words, [and] no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other."—George Washington (1789)

Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”—Martin Luther King, Jr. (quoting 19^th Century abolitionist Theodore Parker)

This is still God’s world. The forces of evil, working through some mortals, have made a mess of a good part of it. But it is still God’s world. In due time, when each of us has had a chance to prove ourselves—including whether or not we are going to stand up for freedom—God will interject himself, and the final and eternal victory shall be for free agency.

And then shall those complacent people on the sidelines, and those who took the wrong but temporarily popular course, lament their decisions.

To the patriots I say this: Take that long eternal look.

Stand up for freedom, no matter what the cost. Stand up and be counted. It can help to save your soul—and maybe your country.—Ezra Taft Benson

“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”—Samuel Adams

"This is our vision. This is our mission.

But we can only get there together.

We are one people, with one destiny.

We all bleed the same blood.

We all salute the same great American flag.

And we are all made by the same God.

And when we fulfill this vision; when we celebrate our 250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new chapter of American Greatness began."—President Donald Trump (first speech to Congress 2-28-2017)