- “The Constitution … is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” –Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819
The Constitution . . .
the germ of dissolution of our federal government . . .
- “The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), 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 from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.” –Thomas Jefferson– letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821
The eyes of the world being thus on our Country . . .
- “The eyes of the world being thus on our Country, it is put the more on its good behavior, and under the greater obligation also, to do justice to the Tree of Liberty by an exhibition of the fine fruits we gather from it.” –James Madison, letter to James Monroe, December 16, 1824
Guard against . . .
- “Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” –George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
Our obligations to our country . . .
- “Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.” –John Adams, letter to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1808
Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles . . .
- “Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.” –George Washington, upon fumbling for his glasses before delivering the Newburgh Address, March 15, 1783
The Gipper Remembering . . .
- “Once each May, amid the quiet hills and rolling lanes and breeze-brushed trees of Arlington National Cemetery, far above the majestic Potomac and the monuments and memorials of our Nation’s Capital just beyond, the graves of America’s military dead are decorated with the beautiful flag that in life these brave souls followed and loved. This scene is repeated across our land and around the world, wherever our defenders rest.
Let us hold it our sacred duty and our inestimable privilege on this day to decorate these graves ourselves — with a fervent prayer and a pledge of true allegiance to the cause of liberty, peace, and country for which America’s own have ever served and sacrificed. …
Our pledge and our prayer this day are those of free men and free women who know that all we hold dear must constantly be built up, fostered, revered and guarded vigilantly from those in every age who seek its destruction. We know, as have our Nation’s defenders down through the years, that there can never be peace without its essential elements of liberty, justice and independence.
Those true and only building blocks of peace were the lone and lasting cause and hope and prayer that lighted the way of those whom we honor and remember this Memorial Day. To keep faith with our hallowed dead, let us be sure, and very sure, today and every day of our lives, that we keep their cause, their hope, their prayer, forever our country’s own.” –Ronald Reagan
The cost to maintain the Declaration . . .
- “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
Understanding the interest of the majority . . .
- “There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong…. In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right….” –James Madison, letter to James Monroe, October 5, 1786
Wisdom from the past . . .
- “Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.” –President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
- “Every measure which establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives to it an administrative form creates thereby a class unproductive and idle, living at the expense of the class which is industrious and given to work.” –French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
- “The world ain’t going to be saved by nobody’s scheme. It’s fellows with schemes that got us into this mess. Plans can get you into things, but you got to work your way out.” –American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)
