- “Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular.” –Thomas Jefferson
Born in other countries . . .
The States can best Govern . . .
- “[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore … never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.” –Thomas Jefferson, letter to Judge William Johnson, 1823
Balance between the National and State governments . . .
- “This balance between the National and State governments ought to be dwelt on with peculiar attention, as it is of the utmost importance. It forms a double security to the people. If one encroaches on their rights they will find a powerful protection in the other. Indeed, they will both be prevented from overpassing their constitutional limits by a certain rivalship, which will ever subsist between them.” –Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788
Essential component parts . . .
- “While the constitution continues to be read, and its principles known, the states, must, by every rational man, be considered as essential component parts of the union; and therefore the idea of sacrificing the former to the latter is totally inadmissible.” –Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788
A Government based on free principles . . .
- “It becomes all therefore who are friends of a Government based on free principles to reflect, that by denying the possibility of a system partly federal and partly consolidated, and who would convert ours into one either wholly federal or wholly consolidated, in neither of which forms have individual rights, public order, and external safety, been all duly maintained, they aim a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth.” –James Madison, Notes on Nullification
Drawn to Washington . . .
- “[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another.” –Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond, 1821
Government revenue . . .
- “The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense. In these are comprehended the regulation of commerce that is, the whole system of foreign intercourse; the support of armies and navies, and of the civil administration.” –Alexander Hamilton, remarks to the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788
The Flame of Liberty
- “If there’s any message that I wish to convey today, it is: be of good cheer. We’re coming back and coming back strong. Our confidence flows not from our skill at maneuvering through political mazes, not from our ability to make the right deal at the right time, nor from any idea of playing one interest group off against the other. Unlike our opponents, who find their glee in momentary political leverage, we [nourish] our strength of purpose from a commitment to ideals that we deeply believe are not only right but that work. … We are, and proudly so, but we are also the keepers of the flame of liberty.” –Ronald Reagan
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
Posterity . . .
- “Posterity — you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.” –John Quincy Adams
- “It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.” — Samuel Adams
