Today I’m taking a departure from my regular business diatribe and posting some quotes (a very long list of quotes) from our founding fathers that I find particularly meaningful in light of today’s situation.  Maybe you’ll enjoy some of them too.  If you have others, please post them in the comments section.  Sorry for the long post:

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

John Adams

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

John Adams

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

John Adams

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
George Washington

Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples’ liberty’s teeth.
George Washington

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.
George Washington

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
George Washington

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.
George Washington

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.
George Washington

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
George Washington

It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.
George Washington

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
George Washington

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
George Washington

The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.
George Washington

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
George Washington

The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.
George Washington

At 20 years of age the will reigns, at 30 the wit, at 40 the judgment.

Benjamin Franklin

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.

Benjamin Franklin

Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended.

Benjamin Franklin

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.

Benjamin Franklin

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

Benjamin Franklin

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Benjamin Franklin

Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security.
Benjamin Franklin

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.
Benjamin Franklin

I guess I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.
Benjamin Franklin

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin

Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.
Benjamin Franklin

Rather go to bed with out dinner than to rise in debt.
Benjamin Franklin

Speak ill of no man, but speak all the good you know of everybody.
Benjamin Franklin

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin

The U. S. Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself.
Benjamin Franklin

Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin

Where liberty is, there is my country.
Benjamin Franklin

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?
Benjamin Franklin

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
Thomas Jefferson

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
Thomas Jefferson

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Thomas Jefferson

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
Thomas Jefferson

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
Thomas Jefferson

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
Thomas Jefferson

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
Thomas Jefferson

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
Thomas Jefferson

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.
Thomas Jefferson

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
Thomas Jefferson

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
Thomas Jefferson

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

In the main it will be found that a power over a man’s support (salary) is a power over his will.
Alexander Hamilton

It’s not tyranny we desire; it’s a just, limited, federal government.
Alexander Hamilton

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
Alexander Hamilton

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
Alexander Hamilton

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
Alexander Hamilton

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?
Patrick Henry

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
Patrick Henry

We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power… the battle, sir, is not to the strong alone it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.
Patrick Henry

When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, sir, was the primary object.
Patrick Henry