Quotes I

"I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would...incline the hearts of the Citizens...to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another...and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field...." --George Washington

Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives." --John Adams

It is important also to consider, that the surest means of avoiding war is to be prepared for it in peace." --Justice Joseph Story

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." --Thomas Paine

Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness." --Samuel Adams

The arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die free rather than live slaves." --Thomas Jefferson

Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind." --Benjamin Rush

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight on the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. ... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, 'This was their finest hour'." --Winston Churchill

We've been blessed with the opportunity to stand for something -- for liberty and freedom and fairness. And these are things worth fighting for, worth devoting our lives to." --Ronald Reagan

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...." –James Madison

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years." --Alexander Fraser Tytler

"Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business ...frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite." --Ronald Reagan

"We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism." --Nikita S. Khrushchev

Political right and public happiness are different words for the same idea." --Samuel Adams

Liberty is a gift from God Almighty, and I believe with all my heart we are obligated to the Author of the Universe to guard it vigilantly and well, with dignity, with honor, with charity -- and with energy." --Alan Keyes

"Guard against the postures of pretended patriotism." --George Washington

"True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them -- the desire to do right -- is precisely the same." --Robert E. Lee

"I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. It is the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." --Thomas Paine

The safest road to Hell is the gradual one -- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." --C. S. Lewis

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." –Will Rogers

"I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, 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 worth more than all the means...." --John Adams

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint." --Edmund Burke

"Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn." --Gen. Douglas MacArthur

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived." --George S. Patton, Jr.

"Ammunition beats persuasion when you are looking for freedom." --Will Rogers

"It is a melancholy reflection that liberty should be equally exposed to danger whether the government have too much or too little power." --James Madison

"Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy, and, in subordination to these great principles, the love of their country; of instructing them in the art of self-government without which they never can act a wise part in the government of societies, great or small; in short, of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system." --Samuel Adams

"To centralize power in the name of freedom is akin to putting a crime syndicate in charge of rooting out corruption. It is the normal state of politics that the more centralized it is, the more damage it does. Fast-track authority [for government-to-government trade agreements] centralizes power and is therefore part of the problem." --Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Our unalterable resolution would be to be free. They have attempted to subdue us by force, but God be praised! in vain. Their arts may be more dangerous than their arms. Let us then renounce all treaty with them upon any score but that of total separation, and under God trust our cause to our swords." –Samuel Adams

"All I have seen has taught me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them. ... It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression...that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; ...working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped. ... The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our Constitution from a coordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme onealone." --Thomas Jefferson

"The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil from the spirit of man." --Albert Einstein

"The choice before us is plain: Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise, discipline or disintegration. I am rather tired of hearing about our rights and privileges as American citizens. The time is come -- it is now -- when we ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship. America's future depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God's government." --Peter Marshall

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." --Nathan Hale

"I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth." --John Adams

"Our Government rests upon religion. It is from that source that we derive our reverence for truth and justice, for equality and liberty, and for the rights of mankind. Unless the people believe in these principles, they cannot believe in our Government." --Calvin Coolidge