Ruined by trade . . .

• “No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous.” –Benjamin Franklin and George Whaley, Principles of Trade, 1774
  

Amplification . . .

• “Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.” –Thomas Jefferson

Setting commerce at perfect liberty . . .

• “I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.” –Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1785
  

A universal peace . . .

• “A universal peace … is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.” –James Madison

Harmony with all Nations . . .

• “Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity and interest. But even our Commercial policy should  hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course.” –George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
  

Facts are stubborn things . . .

• “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
  

Men of unexceptionable characters . . .

• “Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.” –Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775
  

The first transactions of a nation . . .

• “[T]he first transactions of a nation, like those of an individual upon his first entrance into life make the deepest impression, and are to form the leading traits in its character.” –George Washington, letter to John Armstrong, 1788

Respectable Government . . .

• “No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable.” –Federalist No. 62

No compact among men . . .

• 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, 1789