- “What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind.” –Abigail Adams, letter to John Quincy Adams, 1783
What parents require of their Children . . .
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence . . .
- “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.” –George Washington
Religion in a Family . . .
- “Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security.” –Samuel Adams, letter to Thomas Wells, 1780
The party of the individual . . .
- “Our party must be the party of the individual. It must not sell out the individual to cater to the group. No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society. 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. Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people. Any organization is in actuality only the lengthened shadow of its members. A political party is a mechanical structure created to further a cause. The cause, not the mechanism, brings and holds the members together. And our cause must be to rediscover, reassert and reapply America’s spiritual heritage to our national affairs. Then with God’s help we shall indeed be as a city upon a hill with the eyes of all people upon us.” –Ronald Reagan
Once changed from Freedom . . .
- But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” –John Adams
The foundation of national morality . . .
- “The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. … How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?” –John Adams, Diary, 1778
The present Constitution . . .
- “[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes — rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.” –Alexander Hamilton
Gen. George Patton
- “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived”–Gen. George Patton
Marriage as the most interesting event . . .
- “I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one’s life, the foundation of happiness or misery.” –George Washington, letter to Burwell Bassett, 1785
The chains of despotism . . .
- “Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be, that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.” –Federalist No. 55
